Illuminating Diabolical Doings in the Deep

By Ford Turner

Undersea creatures have been doing what they do down there — engaging in unimaginable sex rituals, diabolical killings and unholy feasts — for countless centuries, but it took Dr. Ellen Prager to illuminate it with the light of human drama.

Prager is the author of the new book, Sex, Drugs, and Sea Slime: The Oceans’ Oddest Creatures
and Why They Matter.

Her descriptions of the bizarre ways that creatures like the hagfish, the queen conch and the Maine lobster eat and mate and fight and kill are as compelling as any great novel. The thing is ... these stories are completely true.

As a veteran marine scientist, Prager has served as chief scientist at the world’s only undersea research station, Aquarius Reef Base in Key Largo, and assistant dean at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. Her zeal for marine science, though, has evolved. Today, she’s a sought-after author and has appeared frequently on television. “I have a real passion for bringing the oceans and ocean science to a broader audience,” she says.

She’ll be doing just that during a special lecture at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 28, at Mote Marine Laboratory's Immersion Cinema on Longboat Key where she’ll reveal some of her favorite creature stories from the book. She’ll also explain why these sometimes disgusting, sometimes amazing creatures should matter to the average person. The talk is free but space is limited and reservations are required. Call 941-388-4441, ext. 691.

Prager took a few minutes of her time recently to talk about her craft, her career and those "diabolical" creatures.

The title, “Sex, Drugs, and Sea Slime,” seems to fit so perfectly what you wrote about. When did you come up with it — was it in the midst of your research?

It was towards the end. I started doing research for the book, combing through the literature, talking to colleagues, and honestly, I kept finding these really wonderful, crazy stories.

These themes just started evolving. I did not realize how many animals in the ocean have, use, or are made up of slime! It is truly amazing.

Then, wow, the whole sex thing came up! I discovered just how many unusual and funny strategies there are for organisms to reproduce in the ocean.

And then the last theme, drugs, emerged. I have worked with a lot of scientists who study marine animals to improve human health, in biomedical research and in the search for pharmaceuticals. But I didn’t really realize the breadth and diversity of marine animals being used in that way.

So there you have it: sex, drugs and sea slime!

If you had to pick one, what is the most fascinatingly gross creature you wrote about?

Oh, I can’t pick just one!

Maybe a top three?

It would have to include the hagfish, which I found fascinating, funny and totally gross. Also, the queen conch, because let’s just say the well-endowed males were not only surprising, but a funny, well-known fact that the biologists joked about in private. I think those two are certainly among the top in terms of fascinating or maybe funny.

The other extraordinary organism that I would like to point out, that I think is really interesting, is the cone snail and the search for new pharmaceuticals. There is, in fact, already a new painkiller on the market derived from the cone snail. But scientists think that this one creature in the ocean holds the most potential for drug discovery, more so than any other animal in the world.

There are two sentences from your description of the hagfish that I wanted to ask about: “Hagfishes have, however, discovered another, easier way to gain access to their victims’ tasty, tender insides. They go in through open orifices, such as the mouth, gills, or yes, I am sorry to say, the backdoor.” Yikes! Have you found that the hagfish is one that readers remember?

It is. People remember it. They laugh about it. You know, it is also “the slime monster.”

One of the things that I really love is when I see or hear about other people having fun with the information in the book. They have learned while also being entertained. And to me, engaging people with humor, and getting them to tell stories — you know, I have heard people tell their friends these stories — is just so gratifying.

Did you grow up near the ocean?

I grew up outside of Boston. Not really at the ocean, but my parents took me snorkeling when I was a kid and I used to go to the beach. And I always had a love of nature. I used to run around the woods, climb trees and pretend to be a naturalist.

When I was in high school, I was a lifeguard. One of the guys I worked with brought a scuba tank to the pool and said, “Hey, you want to try this?” They could not get me out of the pool afterward. I was hooked.

So, I got certified to scuba dive while I was in high school. Then I began taking science classes and started studying ocean science and just fell in love with it, particularly because I could combine scuba diving with science.

What has made you gravitate toward writing and public education, rather than just being a pure scientist?

It was not something that was my intention when I started out in science.

Over time, however, I started writing and doing more public speaking, bringing the oceans and ocean science to a broader audience. I love hearing stories from my colleagues and there is so much wonderful information that the public never hears about, but that they would be interested in. And it is so important for more people to understand ocean science and its importance to the planet and society. I developed a great passion, and what I think is a strength, for engaging and communicating to the public.

Are there greater concerns, following the Deepwater Horizon spill?

Before, during and after the spill there are great concerns about the organisms living in the sea. The oil spill was just one moment. Climate change, overfishing, pollution in general and more are continuing to wreak havoc on the oceans and marine life, then and right now.

Certainly, we have to worry about what the impact of the oil spill was in the Gulf of Mexico. Particularly, I think, on the small organisms. We may have lost a whole generation of fish larvae ... We don’t really know and it will take a long time to see the true ecological impacts.

You mean we can’t quantify them yet?

We can’t quantify the impacts, yet. We don’t know if we’ll ever be able to quantify them.

The sad thing is that, the whole oil spill was horrible, but what it also illustrates is that it got everybody up in arms because it was an immediate crisis that we could see, it was right in front of our eyes, on the television, the Internet, our mobile phones. We could see what was going on.

But, look at the harm done to the ocean by the cumulative impacts of our activities over time, that are just as bad, but it isn’t a crisis we can readily see. We continue to face terrible problems in the ocean. We have been having an impact on the ocean and killing marine life, for years. But it just isn’t that immediate crisis right in front of our eyes, that is so blatant.

It seems like there is so much more work for scientists to do.

There is so much we don’t know. I find that aspect of the ocean fascinating, because there is a tendency for people to overestimate how much we truly know about the ocean and marine life.

I hate to use a cliché, but it fits: “We have barely touched the surface.”

Ford Turner is a freelance writer and veteran journalist. The story is reprinted with permission from Mote Magazine.