I have been sucked into watching The Blue Planet today, despite all promises to myself that I would do some reading. I have set myself the task of copying them onto VCD for Nina which has turned out to be a very long process( 1hr 20mins per CD!!!). I decided to check if the first one was working and ended up watching all of it.

The Blue Planet was an excellent series, I love things about the sea. I'd like to know more about the sea but unfortunately have never had the chance to fully investigate (insane jealousy directed towards flatmates who have come back from Scuba diving in Malaysia). Anyway, I do plan on doing some diving when I finish my MA, probably in Malaysia 'cause it's so cheap. There's something about the sea that is intensely alluring. It's depth seems vast and infinite (easy to lose oneself when encompassed by such immensity), it contains wonders that few people have ever seen and even more are there to be uncovered. On one of the episodes of The Blue Planet they show a lake on the ocean floor. This may seem completely ridiculous but a layer of brine lies over the surface of the lake so that it is indeed a body of water contained within the expanse of the ocean!

The creatures of the sea are so variable and strange that I find them quite fascinating. Often they appear like alien creatures, nothing that could be imagined by the mind of a human being. Their habits and rituals are wierd and wonderful: deep sea environments lit only by the bioluminesence of various fish, tiny male angler fish that attach themselves to the female so that they are little more than a bag of sperm stuck to the female. And octopuses! I've always been afraid of octopuses, they're very very creepy and they become even more creepy the further into the ocean you go. In the museum near my school when I was a child there was a replica of a giant octopus attached to the roof and I used to peer at it around the corner with a mixture of revulsion and fascination.


I must learn more about the sea, I love things that are hidden and unknown, creatures that appear alien and inconceivable to our human minds. When I finally get to explore the sea bed I might never leave... I'd like to turn into a fish... preferably a fish with lungs and wings so that I could be a bird too.

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