(Roughly) Daily

Aquariums are currently all the rage. Of the forty-one American aquariums accredited by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association in 2003, more than half opened since 1980, sixteen since 1990 alone.These are not traditional halls of fish tanks but huge, immersive environments with increasingly exotic fish in ever more realistic habitats: live coral reefs, artificial currents, indoor jungles, and living kelp forests. Massive public/private endeavors, the new breed of aquarium has flourished in an era of ambitious urban renewal aimed at reviving derelict inner-city waterfronts. Their prominent role in such schemes has caused the Wall Street Journal to dub the last two decades “the age of aquariums.” We are in love with looking at fish. But why?…

Ginger Strand explains: “Why look at fish?”

* Loren Eiseley

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As we dive, dive, dive, we might recall that it was on this date in 1875 that the first sounding of the Mariana Trench– the deepest natural trench on Earth– was made by the British survey ship H.M.S. Challenger during its first global expedition.  Accurate measurements from the surface remain difficult; but in 2010, NOAA used sound pulses to record a 36,070-ft (10,994 m) depth in the Challenger Deep at the southern end of the Mariana.

The Challenger‘s voyage was the first expedition organized specifically to gather data on a wide range of ocean features, including ocean temperatures seawater chemistry, currents, marine life, and the geology of the seafloor– that’s to say, it was the birth of modern oceanography.

H.M.S. Challenger

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