sea creatures
tagged: girlblogging
this was supposed to come out last week, but I’ve been feeling a little under-the-weather lately, so here it is now. this (past) week, lucidiot and I agreed that the theme this time would be “ocean.” x3
really, I just wanted a chance to gush about cute sea creachers.
for as long as I can remember, I’ve loved being near the water, even though now that I am older, large, open stretches of it make me incredibly nervous, especially at night. at this point, I’ve lived most of my life on some kind of coast or another.
probably my favorite part of living near the ocean are the random sightings of sea creatures. I’ve long loved many animals, but sea creatures hold a special sort of fascination for me. I’m not sure what it is specifically, but there’s something about viewing a jellyfish in its natural habitat, seeing it just floating along underwater that feels borderline…spiritual?
idk there’s just always been a sense of peace whenever I look at sea creatures…they’re so far removed from our lives on land. they don’t worry about things like politics or religion…just vibing along the ocean floor…taking things as they come.
i’m definitely more than a little envious of that.
where I live now has an aquarium, and once it opens in the spring, my partner and I plan to go visit it. I’ve always wanted to go to an aquarium!
I’ve been to zoos in the past, and some of them had underwater areas/tanks you could look at, but nothing like a real aquarium with its myriad creatures. this particular aquarium also has a touch tank!!!!! which means!!!! I will be able to pat sea flap flaps!!!! 
if I think about it, underwater levels in video games always have the most calming BGM. I don’t really have much to say about that other than noting it. x3
recently I read the manga shimeji simulation by tsukumizu, and the main character, shijima, is absolutely fascinated by sea creatures as well (she just like me fr fr). that made her immediately very charming to me, since I also love them. 
I suppose I could talk about some of my favorite creatures…I really like starfish! when I took biology in high school, they made us do a dissection on starfish, which I refused to participate in. I still don’t fully understand why they insist that you dissect a creature yourself for those sorts of classes…anything I am going to learn from that I can learn from photographs, no? the cruelty of performing experiments on an animal (whether it’s living or not) is just too much for me! 
but I enjoy starfish, clione (aka sea angels, a type of sea slug), marine flatworms, jellyfish, sea anemone…
hehe, that reminds me of a video we had to watch in biology back when I was in high school…it was about pseudobiceros hancockanus, a species of hermaphroditic marine flatworms that reproduce by dueling with their penises, and the loser gets inseminated… 
nature can be so brutal OwO;;;
I think part of what entrances me so much about aquatic life is the near-cosmic horror quality that many of these creatures have. My every instinct upon seeing one is to turn and run, some of them even make my skin crawl a bit, because they are so strange as to register as alien…but they’re also hauntingly beautiful in a way that’s…disturbing, sure, but also etheral.
moon jellyfish (aurelia aurita), are beautiful but small, and have a cute quality, as do egg yolk jellyfish (phacellophora). larger jellies like cyanea lamarckii or cyanea nozakii can look like ghosts floating along, but the most gorgeous, in my opinion have to be the sea nettles, with their long, ribbon-like tendrils. 
sorry this one was a bit rambly x3 until next time!
published: 2024.11.06
by mana
