10 THE SCIENTIST | the-scientist.com
ANDRZEJ KRAUZEFROM THE EDITORT
he style and sensibilities of Impressionist painter
Claude Monet emerged from the ocean. He is argu-
ably most famous for his paintings of the ponds and
water lilies that dotted his verdant home in landlocked
Giverny, but Impression, Sunrise, the painting that chris-
tened an artistic movement, depicted the bustling port of the
seaside town of Le Havre in Normandy. Monet was raised
from the age of five in Le Havre, and it was there that he
met Eugène Boudin, a marine painter who would teach the
young artist to use oils and paint outdoors. The eager stu-
dent would paint numerous seascapes throughout his robust
career, and Monet once famously said: “It is extraordinary
to see the sea; what a spectacle! She is so unfettered that
one wonders whether it is possible that she again become
calm.” Monet’s contemporaries, such as Vincent van Gogh
and Paul Gauguin, and artists who came before, including
Japan’s Katsushika Hokusai, were similarly drawn to the
ocean’s dynamic charm.
Writers, too, have been moved to create throughout his-
tory by the salty waves. From poems such as Emily Dickinson’s
“I started Early—Took my Dog” and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s
epic “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” to timeless books by
Jules Verne, Herman Melville, John Steinbeck, and Ernest
Hemingway, literary figures of all stripes have committed the
mystery, brutality, and potentiality of the sea to the page.
The same holds true for seminal works of science. Charles
Darwin’s dogma-shattering theory of evolution would not have
arisen from the primordial ooze of creationism without his
arduous, nearly five-year sea journey aboard the HMS Beagle,
which ferried him around the globe and further changed his
mind about the immutability of species. Even before that, as a
student in Edinburgh, Darwin made some of his earliest forays
into biology by studying marine invertebrates under the tute-
lage of Robert Edmond Grant (no relation, as far as I know).
Another paragon of scientific thinking referenced the
unfathomability of the sea as a way to downplay his own
unmatched contributions to physics. Sir Isaac Newton is said
to have declared: “I do not know what I may appear to the
world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy play-
ing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then
finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary,
whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
To me, this connection between the ocean and scien-
tific inspiration makes perfect sense. After all, the con-sensus among
biologists is that
the likeliest sce-
nario for life’s
initiation and
evolution is inti-
mately entwined
with our planet’s
seas. The first rudi-
mentary biomolecules
probably assembled and
began replicating them-
selves in or near ocean waters.
And marine organisms, already
established and evolving for mil-
lions of years, made those first, fateful
slithers into terrestrial living at some evo-
lutionary launching pad situated where the sea
met the land. My own journey through science was greatly
influenced by the sea, and were it not for the allure of
journalism, I would have finished my PhD and most likely
would be a marine biologist today.
It is in this spirit of discovery that The Scientist decided
some time ago to prominently feature stories of marine
research in one issue per year. Over the years, never have
we found any shortage of fascinating research or inspir-
ing stories to be harvested from the ocean. From the con-
fluence of literary and scientific currents highlighted by
Rachel Carson’s relationship with the sea (page 64) to the
tale of the paradigm-shifting discovery that humpback
whales sing songs (page 50), this issue is packed with salt-
tinged tales to delight and challenge the mind. Reporting
my feature story on Florida red tides (page 26) reinvigo-
rated my own fascination with marine research, remind-
ing me that there is so much we have yet to learn about the
boundless waters that connect us all and about the organ-
isms that make their homes in that vast expanse. gEditor-in-Chief
[email protected]The sea has inspired painters and poets for centuries. It has also spurred
generations of scientists to plumb Earth’s living mysteries.BY BOB GRANTOcean, Muse
mentary biomolecules
probably assembled and
began replicating them-
selves in or near ocean waters.
And marine organisms, already
established and evolving for mil-
lions of years, made those first, fateful
slithers into terrestrial living at some evo-The sea has inspired painters and poets for centuries. It has also spurred