Aquaman Approves!

Spot The Fish!

We've talked about Mike Allred's beautiful alt cover for Aquaman #31 before, but did you know that every single fish seen is a real creature of the sea? Above is a key for each fish, and you can learn who each of them are over on Southern Fried Science, the blog of real life biologist/geneticist/all-around-brainiac (and newest F.O.A.M.er) Andrew David Thaler, who has been doing a series of posts just about this cover. Check it out and go to bed tonight smarter than when you woke up!

And Andrew, welcome to F.O.A.M.!

Our Oceans: Where's The Octopus?

There are many reasons Aquaman is my favorite hero, but one of the reasons that tend to be the least examined is the sheer, real-life magic to be found beneath the waves on our very own world.

Orin The Dolphin

This is Orin the Dolphin, a Real Life dolphin named after Aquaman, King of the Seven Seas!

Orin resides at the Indianapolis Zoo, born there on July 12, 2012. Click here to read the write-up on the little guy, where the zoo even namechecks The Atlantis Chronicles!

Several FOAMers alerted me to this story in the last couple weeks, but Shawn Brock (who named his son Orin) was first. In fact, digging through my emails reveals that Shawn sent me this story back in September, but that email somehow slipped through the cracks and I totally forgot about it. Bad Aquaman Shrine! Bad! Bad!

We've always alleged that Aquaman, despite the ups and downs of his comic book career, has always maintained a firm and highly visible place in pop culture, and stories like this only reinforce that belief. Plus, dolphins are awesome.

Thanks Shawn!

Our Oceans: Turtle and Jellyish Team-Up

A turtle taking a ride on a jellyfish. Your argument is invalid, and all that.

Our Oceans: The Mola

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.