Fradam

Today, reports of Atlantis flitted across my table. With the launch of an Ocean in Google Earth, searching beneath the ocean has never been easier. How exciting to have this opportunity! The fact that oceans cover nearly three quarters of the entire globe, yet we know so little about what is actually down there is.. intriguing. A lot of it is well over 3km deep… there is a lot that can fit down there. Like the infamous colossal squid, which we still know… so little about. Except that it is not terribly small.

Generally, when comparing large objects, the usual denominators are simple: how does it compare to a London bus? How about a sperm whale? Well, here we go:

So the colossal squid dwarfs all else. Well, not all else, but everything in our sample space. Mind you, they apparently first proved the existence of colossal squids by discovering the tentacles of one, in the stomach of a sperm whale, so perhaps being so big isn’t so wonderful.

Usually, if you put squid and stomach in the same sentence, I think of something more like…

.. which got me thinking. Your average serving of salt and pepper calamari has about 125 grams of actual squid, which will generally take me about 12 minutes to consume.

The colossal squid that was snagged last year, weighed in at nearly 500 kg. So if my job was to eat the colossal squid; i.e. I ate for 8 hours a day, it would take me a 100 days to eat the entire thing. I just hope Burnsie is cooking it… with that amount of eating, I wouldn’t want to get bored.

All in all though, it is an amazing creature. Tentacles are laced with more than your average suckers; hooks of a varying nature also adorn the limbs. Scientists use that sort of information as evidence to support the idea that it is an aggressive creature, but really, there’s no way to know. The eye of the colossal squid is the largest eye we’ve ever encountered - my my what large eyes you have… So we’re still discovering new things about the world we live in…which I find incredible. God made it so rich and abundant of life and variety that the depths of our oceans sometimes feel as mysterious as the outer reaches of the universe. I hope one day I can be so fortunate to be making discoveries about one or the other. Maybe I’ll drill 20,000 leagues below the sea and find chocolate!

For now though, I’ll be content with the discovery (thanks to Kellie and Woody) of a new friend - Banjo. A beautiful fighting fish (betta), he enjoys fervent swimming at dinner time, docile snoozing in the afternoons, and making pouting faces at the Bart Simpson figurine on top of his tank. I wish my camera was able to take a photo of him that actually did him some creative justice as he is quite the poser. The fins, almost gossamer in nature, shimmer with a back light; he seems to have understood this and appeared to quite enjoy dancing in front of it. I am beginning to recognise a personality as well, which is an exciting thing to witness develop. Clearly, size does not matter when it comes to appreciating the wonderful things in the world around us. Banjo so far has not expressed displeasure at my singing either, so as far as friends go, he is definitely doing well

So, the next time you are over at my place, please do ask to say hello to Banjo, he definitely has enjoyed meeting new people, being the social butterfly fish and all.