Soccoro Dive Trip January 2024: Manta Dreams
In January I went on a dive trip to Soccoro Island to tag oceanic manta with gps trackers.
Soccoro Island is a marine preserve off the coast of Mexico (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socorro_Island ) and the trip was led by Dr. Andrea Marshall who co-founded the Marine Megafauna Foundation (https://marinemegafauna.org/), a research organization that seeks to protect biodiversity by protecting the most visible species.
In Dr. Andrea Marshall’s own words: “The giant manta ray is a classic example of a species that is quickly succumbing to human-induced pressures. When we first assessed manta rays in 2003 there simply was not enough information on the species to determine their conservation status and they were listed as ‘Data Deficient’, but on each of the subsequent assessments, their conservation status increased steadily from Near-Threatened, to Vulnerable and now to Endangered. Their current status is a direct result of unsustainable pressure from fishing, which now threatens to destabilise their populations across the globe.”
Manta dreams
Witnessing these manta in their natural habitat reconnected me with a sense of the real — reminding me that I am part of whole living systems. As filter-feeders Manta sieve plankton-rich water through their specially adapted gills. Witnessing their behavior it comes across as slightly dreamy — as if they are sovereign and beyond any concern — endlessly drifting — unhurried, unrushed. The constrast was noticable — the more frenetic movement of hammerhead sharks, nurse sharks, bright reef fish, and we ourselves as divers acting as a counter poise to this stately movement. I felt like I was peering through a veil between worlds — as if they were not entirely in this world, that they lived in a dream space, in some ways profoundly alien. What were they thinking about? Were they thinking anything? Did they have any apprehension of us — or were we part of a landscape that while acknowledged was mute? They’d evolved so profoundly to fit this niche, and yet this niche was the apex of a vast assemblage of complex systems that stretched out in time and space — into the corals around us — into us ourselves.
Our dreams
These experiences draw a sharp contrast with busy urban world we primates have built for each other. Somehow we’re all failing to remember just how vibrant or meaningful a connection with nature is. It’s as if we have a different dream.
It makes me wonder what would we be willing to give up or change in our day to day lives so that creatures like the Manta could continue to exist? How would we feel about a world that didn’t have Manta in it? Would it make a difference to us? Would it seem smaller and more venal in any way? Obviously many of us don’t have an opportunity to witness manta — and it makes sense that we may not value them as highly. But do we need to simply see these creatures more? Or is there something deeper about the way we pursue our goals that precludes the existence of things we don’t constantly see? In some ways this question is less an inspection of value systems, or right or wrong, but more about how different dreams bump up against each other — and where and how we choose to leave space for dreams that are not our own.
We use often use our stories to memorialize the past, and as a way to rehearse the future, to plot hopeful trajectories through a world that is literally beyond our comprehension. Are Manta a part of our own story? They do appear in myth — such as in Maori legend ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punga_(mythology) ), and we do tend to incorporate their potent imagery into our commercial products and brands; perhaps in an attempt to imbue our own ventures with their totemic value. But their value to us seems to be a function of their utility. We ‘use’ the parts of them that we like as an idea but it’s unclear if we honor their own desires.
It is true that world is evolving, we can’t freeze it in place; resilience and adaptability requires a flexible response — it is perhaps a future that doesn’t have room for oceanic manta. But between stasis and change it feels like we could at least try harder.
Tired Dreams
It isn’t just that there is a tension between our dreams and the dreams of others — it is also that I question the value of some of our dreams. Our dreams do feel exhausting. Generally we have a hedonistic treadmill, we generally seem to have an ability to be happy, and happiness may be a pre-requisite for living but is happiness enough? Much of what most of us seem to do most of the time seems to have very little meaning. We are often only prodded to action by fear, and many of us work on meaningless projects that are soon forgotten, have experiences that we cannot recollect a week later, focus on short term rewards at best.
In our sleep-walking through reality we are also spending our ecosystems down, converting ecosystem roles to machines or to people, and increasingly having our conversations focused on different kinds of people rather than a wider ranging conversation engaging radically different and alien kinds of minds. Everything is becoming a primate mirror. Less and less often do we interact with a truly alien mind, a mind whose apprehension of the world is simply ‘different’ from our own. How often do any of us have to negotiate with a wild animal as an equal? Are there any lines in the sand that we would not cross for personal gain? What non-human thing would we be willing to die for? Clearly our solopsism extends outwards from humans first. We protect ourselves, our kin who look like us, cute fuzzy animals that tickle our parental instincts, and then finally we consider protecting creatures unlike us such as the lobster. It’s a kind of failure to dream, to imagine a world where there are other kinds of intelligences that are equal. As Bruce Mau says “we treat nature like a toilet”.
There’s a way that we oscillate between terror and boredom. We’re asked to be individuals; to survive individually, and there are huge stresses here; trying to figure out our finances, our health, our future — we cling to systems that injure us in the long term because of our short term anxieties. We have such a tight grip that there’s just no room for a broader discussion — or we checkout and avoid real interaction; preferring ennui to engagement.
Our avoidant behavior and our impacts on nature feel related. They are a product of large forces, rapid change, externalization of costs, a lack of thought and/or even hostile design.
In the last dying days of human pre-eminence; prior to machine minds arising, we would do well to define a value system that is less human centric. Ethics means saying ‘no’ — it means having value systems that aren’t always just about us. Our vision, hopes, aspirations of the future should be pluralistic; protecting life and diversity as a whole, not just humans. Nature thinks in parallel; it tries out all solutions simultaneously; in effect computation is free — it’s hard for us to wrap our heads around an idea that millions of organisms are exploring a possibility space — but we should seek to protect that space anyway — even if we don’t understand it. Leaving room for diverse ways of being is at the very least a foundation of resilience, and a way to reduce the impact of black swan events.
In a sense we are unfortunate gardeners: we cannot help but stomp on the world, and we garden only by choosing where to place our feet. As a veterinarian, a parent, a baker, a construction worker, an architect, artist, dancer, city planner, or fund manager, decisions we make still create ripples that affect others. Cars are loud for example, but not for the driver. But we are becoming smarter. And we do possess a uniquely human empathic ability to imagine ourselves as others. To apprehend the urgencies and hungers of another being, to inhabit, to become, embody and see from that new vantage point. Design is simply a technique, below design is the territory of dreams. It is here that that we can take what we’ve learned, what we feel, and apply that to our future: the objects, interactive systems, buildings, ecosystems, human interactions, everything.
Dreaming together
I’ve been using the term ‘dream’ because the goals of each of us can be difficult to know, mysterious, even magical. I prefer this term now more than the idea of ‘design’ because it feels deeper — and it also raises for me the idea of how dreams join together and if we can leave room for other peoples, or other creatures dreams, that we cannot know nor fully understand.
The world itself is cellular — every creature has its own dream, and all of these dreams bump up against each other, and together we effectively dream at scale. If you walk down a city street, every building started off as the dream of some person, and the aggregate forms the cities we know so well.
We can see and apprehend the surface embodiment of megafauna such as Manta. But their entire existence is the top of a pyramid of life that is ‘wild’ that is outside of our purview. Manta are referred to as keystone or umbrella species because when we see them we know that there’s an entire ecosystem underneath them supporting their existence. In a sense they are proof of the health of a much larger complexity. Witnessing that complexity itself, and comparing it and contrasting it to our urban landscapes, our own systems, is enlightening.
Diving into a wild coral reef is like having a conversation with natures version of a city. You are presented with a bio-organic geometry: baroque, overlapping, somewhat bewildering. Colorful fish dart past, individually or in larger schools, each with their own errands. A constant soundscape of pops, clicks and growls hinting at some mysterious inner working.
Reefs are made of coral, and each coral is composed of thousands of individual coral polyps. Somehow polyps work together to build megastructures that can sift the ocean for dinner, provide habitat for fish and also be a kind of lego block substrate for further growth.
Each polyp in turn is a universe unto itself. Cousins to anemones and jellyfish, polyps can live independently or in large reef-building coral colonies. During the day, their captive zooxanthellae algae harness the sun’s energy to produce sugars and amino acids. In fact as much as 90% of the zooxanthellae solar energy harvesting is captured by the polyp. As dusk descends, polyps return to an animal form, unfurling long stinging tentacles to ensnare zooplankton, their favored nocturnal snack. All these inputs are utilized to produce proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and to secrete the calcium carbonate skeleton that gradually builds the reefs that we admire.
Relationships don’t end here. Each coral may have its own client species. You may see domino demoiselles in an intimate symbiosis with a local stony branching coral; never straying far, debriding those coral of algae overgrowth and parasitic infections. As a group they instantly dart to safety between the branches to then gaze outwards reproachingly when a grouper, snapper or even a diver coasts past.
A reef isn’t any one thing — it is an arrangement of parts, entangled, interlocking, supporting each other. Each participant captures energy at different scales, exploiting different energetic niches in the larger arcology. This is the signature of nature: diversity, resilience and complexity. These animals are not exactly ‘in balance’ or ‘stable’ but rather together constitute a genetic Library of Alexandria, a highly responsive database of billions of years worth of strategies. A coral reef is an organism that responds rapidly to change — it is a kind of living creature itself.
When I compare that idea to our dreams I wonder if we haven’t gone terribly wrong; or if we failed to dream vividly enough.
Wilder dreams
The question that I keep circling around is effectively can we leave room for things outside of ourselves? What percentage of the world should be left aside? If we imagine future technology capable of unbuilding civilization, removing buildings and streets, and more effectively managing human use can we have a world that is more like 90% wilderness?
A 2019 study in Nature reports that 23% of terrestrial surfaces, excluding Antarctica, and 13% of the oceans are still classified as wilderness. A 10% decline over the last 20 years. And more than 70% of this wilderness is in regions that are towards the north pole. About 13% of Canadians live in the Canadian boreal forests for example. A more recent study in Science.org reports that 19% of the world remains wild.
According to Nature “Wilderness areas are ecologically intact landscapes free of human pressures which cause significant biophysical disturbance of the natural environment. This includes industrial activities such as land-clearing, dense human settlements, agriculture, industry, and infrastructure development. Importantly, this definition does not exclude indigenous peoples and communities, who have been part of wilderness areas for millennia through deep bio-cultural connections to the land.” As well “Wilderness areas are critically important for in situ biodiversity conservation, supporting the last intact mega-faunal assemblages, wide ranging and migratory species, and species sensitive to exploitation by or conflicts with humans”.
Leaving space
If our dreams include creatures like Manta then we have to do better than to simply leave room for them themselves.
We need to dream of systems that are make the world around us richer, that create more niches, more opportunities.
We have to dovetail our own dreams with the dreams of nature. There’s no reason why our lived spaces cannot be half-wild, there’s no reason why megafauna cannot co-exist with us on a daily basis, reminding us of what it means to be alive.
We have to find a hybrid of human and natural visions of the future — yielding on some of our goals in order to be part of a larger vision of of life.
Note
Andrea had a serious brain injury early this year and is in recovery — if you wish to learn more about her story and to help please follow this link:
