Biological Oceanography

of a jellyfish’s swimming bell? How can a flat patch of gland cells, the
appendicularian oikoplast, produce a gob of mucus that unfolds into a multistage filter
with coarse and fine pores, trapdoors, and flow tunnels? How can useable information
about up and down come from a statocyst in the middle of a mysid’s tail fan that must
constantly flip up and down, back and forth? Or, is gravity not the datum sought by
that sensor? Is the sea that we experience at its surface as so wild with waves and
churning, really quiet enough just a little way down that delicately linked salp chains
can grow to lengths of several meters without breaking? Apparently so. Some such
questions we can answer; some answers are too well hidden behind a watery curtain
ever to be found. A dose of lingering mystery is a good thing.