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Friday, August 03, 2012

Our Oceans: The Mola

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I've have always tried to have some Aqua-content, no matter how small, in every single post the Shrine has ever put up. To that end, I really have never covered any of the real-life stuff that goes on in our oceans, because I don't want the blog to stray too far from it's original mission.

But when I saw this picture--which has been making the rounds of the internet the past couple of weeks--I changed my mind because it's just too friggin' cool. This is a Mola fish, also known as an Ocean Sunfish. Despite their massive size, these are gentle creatures and can be spotted in surprisingly large numbers. You can read more about them here.

As much as I love Aquaman's superheroics, sometimes I think it'd be cool to drop all the Black Manta/Ocean master jazz and just have the Sea King swim around, looking at stuff.

5 comments:

Wings1295 said...

Amazing picture! That would make for a cool "game" or whatever they are called, the ones where you just float and swim... Endless Ocean is it? Wouldn't that be cool, to have an Aquaman version? So peaceful sounding.

Omega Agent1 said...

The ocean is full of beautiful things. This is one of them and I think watching the sea king swim around exploring the oceans would be good reading.

Richard said...

This is one reason I became so enchanted by Joe Samachson's work when you covered it here, never having paid much attention to him before. His Aquaman stories showed a lively interest in real marine life and an awareness of real scientists and how they do their work. As marine biology has always been part of my life, I can only dream of another writer coming along who shared Samachson's interest and belief that comics can be used to convey the beauty of the real world. We certainly have artists who are up to the task, if only they'd be allowed to do it! Mind you, there also has to be a publisher who'd be willing to print those stories.

Unknown said...

I always thought an educational children's book about sea life "hosted" by Aquaman would be a great idea.

El Ka-Bong! said...

As a marine Biologist I appreciate the Mola mola post. I used them as a comparison to the deep sea fish that I study. Both eat gelatinous food (originally thought to be low in nutritional value). But since the Sunfish is something like 1000x bigger than my fish, it must have some nutrition to it to support such a large animal.

In relating this back to Aquaman, I think the new team has really done their work with studying the fishes they have put in the new series. It doesn't seem to me that they just throw a random generic "fish" in there. I've seen hatchet fish, anglerfish, a frill shark (and those are only the fishes that I'm familiar with, as they're deep sea fishes). I think the new team is bringing fish that people might not be familiar with, or might not get to see otherwise, into focus by adding them as parts of the scenery in some of these stories. I appreciate it greatly and it makes me happy everytime I see a fish I recognize.