"Blue of Distance"

​“Water is colorless, shallow water appears to be the color of what lies underneath it, but deep water is full of scattered light, the purer the water the deeper the blue. The sky is blue for the same reason, but the blue at the horizon, the blue land that seems to be dissolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance. The light that does not touch us, does not get to travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the color blue.”

• Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

 
There is a lot of blue when you are on your way to a place that at least in the mind is ostensibly white. You do a lot of waiting when you are crossing the ocean. Last time I was on the Palmer I remember waiting a lot, and in the process, I had the opportunity to re-read my favorite book, the one that contains the quote above. Now, being back on this amazing vessel with my friends, colleagues, and strangers I am reminded about just how much chatting you do on the bow in front of blue water, how much idle staring at distant blue landforms happens through all the port holes and windows, and how boring doing something so exciting can be. I have always been obsessed with science fiction, and I realize now that there is always a cut between transit from one stellar body or gas giant or star system to the next. In reality, I bet the science team investigating Europa or the smuggler bringing lifesaving drugs to some distant colony also do a lot of looking out through portholes at the vastness of space staring idly waiting for anything interesting besides the same blackness to pass by. At least we get the color blue.
 
I study the evolutionary relationships of organisms within the superphylum (a big grouping) that goes by the name Lophotrochozoa or Spiralia. More specifically I am interested in all the organisms within this group that are small, less than a millimeter. Lophotrochozoa contains large organisms such as the giant squid, massive annelid worms, and some of our favorite marine delicacies like oysters, clams, and mussels. The lesser known Lophotrochozoa, housing small animals the size of half the width of a human hair can live all over the planet, from vacation beach sand in San Diego to muddy bottoms in the Antarctic. It just so happens that the most exciting, unseen, microscopic, sand-dwelling creatures are typically described from a place where you can get an ice-cold margarita and California burrito, and not 300 meters below the surface of the Southern Ocean. Thus, we must take up the mantle and forgo the ice-cold margarita for the ice-cold Antarctic to discover and describe the vast diversity of minute animal life living in its muds, and sands.
 
For now, though, I will have to be content with staring out at blue ocean, underneath blue sky, on an orange boat, going to a white place.
 
Nickellaus Roberts
PhD Candidate
Kocot Lab
University of Alabama