We spent the night and the morning crossing from the Falkland Islands to South America. We were escorted from the Falklands by platoons of splashing penguins and fur seals and greeted this morning by squadrons of albatross and other soaring birds.
There was a fresh breeze from the north changing to the east as we neared the Beagle Channel. The gray sky of the morning became a bright blue in the afternoon… perfect for a day of lectures, packing, reflecting and reminiscing.
While a night and a day at sea might seem like a great distance in a ship, imagine what the distance would be like for something with no engine, nor even wings nor legs, something that moves like a message in a bottle. For these creatures – the plankton – the oceans must indeed be immense!
How do they “pack” for their voyage, their life? One could be small, make its own food from light energy. Or one could be slightly larger and feed on these food-producing phytoplankton. Or one could be a true colossus of the sea and be huge, yet almost weightless and insubstantial, feeding on zooplankton, crustaceans and fish.
The lion’s mane jelly can grow to more than seven feet across, with stinging tentacles trailing up to 100 feet behind. When they are hunting, they will sit motionless in the water with their tentacles on the same plane as their body, like a spider’s web with the spider in the middle. The diver in the picture, Head Chef Jesper, survived his recent encounter with this moderate-sized lion’s mane jelly to plan and execute tonight’s farewell dinner. Something I’m sure our hardy and hungry ship is thankful for, as we are neither weightless nor insubstantial!
