Sex in the Sea: Our Intimate Connection with Kinky Crustaceans, Sex-Changing Fish, Romantic Lobsters, and Other Salty Erotica of the Deep
296
Sex in the Sea: Our Intimate Connection with Kinky Crustaceans, Sex-Changing Fish, Romantic Lobsters, and Other Salty Erotica of the Deep
296eBook
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Overview
An Oprah.com "Best Book for National Reading Month"
Forget the Kama Sutra. When it comes to inventive sex acts, just look to the sea. There we find the elaborate mating rituals of armored lobsters; giant right whales engaging in a lively threesome whilst holding their breath; full moon sex parties of groupers and daily mating blitzes by blueheaded wrasse. Deep-sea squid perform inverted 69s, while hermaphrodite sea slugs link up in giant sex loops. From doubly endowed sharks to the maze-like vaginas of some whales, Sex in the Sea is a journey unlike any other to explore the staggering ways life begets life beneath the waves.
Beyond a deliciously voyeuristic excursion, Sex in the Sea uniquely connects the timeless topic of sex with the timely issue of sustainable oceans. Through overfishing, climate change, and ocean pollution we are disrupting the creative procreation that drives the wild abundance of life in the ocean. With wit and scientific rigor, Hardt introduces us to the researchers and innovators who study the wet and wild sex lives of ocean life and offer solutions that promote rather than prevent, successful sex in the sea. Part science, part erotica, Sex in the Sea discusses how we can shift from a prophylactic to a more propagative force for life in the ocean.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466879225 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 02/09/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 296 |
| Sales rank: | 539,596 |
| File size: | 14 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Sex in the Sea
Our Intimate Connection with Sex-Changing Fish, Romantic Lobsters, Kinky Squid, and other Salty Erotica of the Deep
By Marah J. Hardt, Missy Chimovitz
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2016 Marah J. HardtAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-7922-5
CHAPTER 1
THE QUEST
Seeking Sex in Saltwater
SEX-SEA TRIVIA
• There are microscopic singles bars in the sea.
• Groupers like sex on the edge.
• The largest organ on the planet shaped (in part) by female sexual desire isn't a penis.
• Male blue whales are getting their Barry White on.
SEX-SEA SOUNDTRACK
1. "Somebody to Love" — Freddie Mercury
2. "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" — Marvin Gaye
3. "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe" — Barry White
4. "Good Vibrations" — The Beach Boys
Ah, the quest for a mate. It's never been easy. But if you think it's hard to find a partner on land, just imagine having to search the entire sea for a suitable lover. Up on terra firma, we've only two dimensions to deal with (people don't fly through the air, after all) and a quarter of the earth's surface (much of which is uninhabited). Plus, we've got the Internet, with dating sites galore all claiming the most sophisticated algorithms to ensure that compatible individuals connect.
The sea represents a far more challenging environment, and not just because of the lack of Match.com. The oceans are just so vast, covering about 99 percent of the habitable space on the planet. Sure, there are some species that live on a small reef, mating with the equivalent of their high school sweetheart. But for many, from whales to wahoo, individuals from a single species are dispersed over entire ocean basins. In this enormous space, even the biggest animal ever to live on Earth — the blue whale — is but a small fish in a very, very big pond. From high above, the sleek silhouette of this two-hundred-ton leviathan disappears into an indiscernible speck long before the edges of the continents come into view. And that's just the superficial perspective. Below the whale lie miles and miles of ocean, through which any number of mates may be swimming — or not. For the smallest members of the ocean — the microscopic grazers and hunters upon which the rest of the food web depends — a bucket of water may as well be the Pacific.
How in the world, within all the vastness that is the sea, do individuals ever find each other? This search for a mate is akin to the quest for the Holy Grail, and like King Arthur, most ocean animals — from the infinitesimal to the enormous — must undertake this mission at least once in their lifetime. And over the eons, enough of them have succeeded.
The swirling spheres of millions of sardines, the mile-long migrating schools of mobula rays, the winding walls of oyster reefs so tall they break the surface at high tide — such astounding abundance is testament to the fact that despite the long odds, species from shrimp to sperm whales continue to find suitable mates. For some, the winning search strategy is to journey to one of the ocean's many hot spots for daily or seasonal soirees. For others, hookups are isolated events, requiring some sophisticated, long-distance advertising in order for one partner to find the other. And in some cases, it's a carefully calculated combination of both: a matter of getting to the right place at the right time, and letting others know you've arrived.
SEARCH TACTIC NO. 1: HEAD FOR THE SINGLES BARS
He gazed out across the crowded city. She was out there, somewhere, keeping a low profile so as not to draw too much attention to herself. That was smart. But it made his search all the more difficult. He had almost nothing to go on. She had left a string of clues he could follow, if he was careful. This was indeed the most important case of his life, and the most challenging. By now others could also be hot on her trail. His mission was to find her before anyone else did. It would not be easy. Asking too many questions, broadcasting his presence too widely, would only bring unwanted attention. No, this case required the utmost discretion and superior tracking skills. If he missed a single clue, he could be thrown off her trail for weeks.
He knew he didn't have long. They could both be dead within days.
So might go an opening from a Bogart film. But it is equally fitting as a memoir of the dating life of the ocean's smallest residents. Searching for a microscopic mate in the sea is like looking for a needle in a haystack, only the haystack is the size of Mount Everest. Consider copepods, distant relatives of shrimp that fuel the ocean's food web. Some species are as small as a sesame seed; others about as long as your thumbnail. Even within the confines of the average home aquarium, a male copepod swimming around randomly is likely to bump into a female copepod about once per year, yet individuals may live only a few months and some only a few weeks.
With an entire ocean to contend with, how in the world does an animal smaller than a grain of rice find an equally tiny (and transparent) mate in all that blue? Dr. Peter Franks, a professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, has a simple answer: they go to singles bars, of course.
Before we dive into the details of miniature singles scenes in the sea, here's why the sex life of copepods is of interest. Small in size, copepods are big in impact. Tiny and packed with fat, they are the baby food of the sea, feeding countless larval crabs, fish, and squid. Crunchy on the outside, full of gooey oils on the inside, they're also the go-to meal for enormous, swirling schools of bait fish — sardines, anchovies, herring — that in turn feed the tuna, snapper, and cod we like to eat. Many of the eleven thousand or so species of copepod are small enough to fit on the tip of a pencil, yet their abundance satiates pods of whales. Attaining those kinds of numbers requires copious amounts of copepod copulation, which requires some close physical contact between males and females.
To close the gap between them, a male must have excellent detective skills, homing in on subtle clues left behind by a swimming female. Dr. Jeannette Yen of Georgia Tech is an expert in the way minute animals move through water, and she explains that when you are as small as a copepod, water behaves differently; it's thicker and stickier. As copepods swim, they must dig their way along, pushing the water out in front of them and leaving temporary tunnels of disturbed water flow behind. Like barely-there footprints in the sand, these are the tracks of the females the males then trace by feeling their way along.
Fine, feathery hairs on copepods can detect subtle differences in water flow. A surge of motion from one direction may indicate a predator; the rippling waves of a swimming female create a different pattern. In some species, females may also infuse their personal corridor with pheromones, making their signal even stronger. Whether by feel or scent, when a male crosses a female's track, he literally flips.
He rapidly spins his body, cartwheeling into the middle of the trail as he begins a frenetic high-frequency zigzag — in three dimensions — across the trail. Once he's locked on, the male's pirouetting pursuit is remarkably tight, and he successfully narrows the distance from up to one hundred body lengths away. That's the equivalent of a guy standing on top of a sixty-story building and picking out his girl down on street level by the smell of her perfume.
These trails last but a few seconds, however, which is where the importance of singles bars — spots of particularly still water in an otherwise swirling sea — come in. Copepods congregate where the footprints of females can last a little longer. That is, in the quiet, thin section of water where two different pieces of ocean meet.
Far from a uniform pool of blue, the ocean is much more like a layer cake. Different water strata of varying temperature or salinity stack up on top of one another throughout the water column, and where two water masses meet, a distinct boundary layer appears. Boundaries such as thermoclines are created by differences in temperature, but such an interface can also be created by differences in salinity or by currents and gyres when swift, spiraling eddies move through one piece of the water column but not another. These carry sections of the sea along at different rates, similar to high-and low-altitude clouds riding different winds.
For copepods swimming through the open sea, the thin boundaries between warm and cold, saltier and fresher, faster and slower water provide distinct "landmarks" within an otherwise featureless blue. These boundaries also remain relatively stable, with little mixing of water across two layers. This means the water within the boundary layer — a thin bar — remains relatively still. It is here that the females can pour their eau de copepod into their freshly carved tunnels. Rather than love letters, Yen remarks, copepod females leave "love envelopes." The quieter the water, the longer the message remains.
We may only detect the most extreme contrasts between warm and cold or fresh and salty, but copepods experience water as we would feel the texture of different fabrics. For them the contrast between the still, Zen-like vibe of the boundary layer stands out against the other parts of the sea like silk versus corduroy, allowing them to easily detect and cluster within a much narrower patch of ocean. So in addition to increasing the shelf life of the female's footprint, these sections of sea do what all good singles bars do: they concentrate the horny hordes. The more copepods that arrive within the boundary layer, the thicker the crowd, and the more likely each male is to find a trail and begin his sprinting pursuit.
But future generations of copepods may have trouble finding these trusted singles bars. As climate change progresses, ocean surface temperatures warm. On one hand, warmer water on top could strengthen the boundary layers, but it also may shift where those layers occur, how much oxygen exists (warmer water holds less oxygen), and the availability of food within each zone. On the other hand, warmer oceans fuel fiercer storms, which churn the surface and can disturb or completely erase the previously reliable layered landmarks of the open blue.
Even when the male finds the trail, it's not all smooth sailing. In some species, an elaborate copepod courtship dance ensues, with the couple swirling around to size each other up. Are they the right species? Is she a virgin? Studies show male copepods can detect and preferentially pursue unmated females, likely by sensing some kind of chemical cue. If the male decides she's the one, he lunges and hangs on tight.
The next ordeal in the quest for sex often involves a vigorous "rejection dance" by the pounced-upon female. Whether the extreme flips and violent shaking are a way for females to discourage fertilization when it is not needed or a way to test the male's mettle is not known.
The final act, the driving force behind all that seeking, happens when the male transfers and then cements good and tight a small packet of sperm, called a spermatophore, into one of two genital pores in the tail segment of the female. He does this by using his fifth pair of legs.
In an arctic species of copepod, males are not perfectly symmetrical; they have a preferred dominant leg for their sexy business, and the other leg (as well as their antennule) is used simply to hold on to the female. So it is that lefty males plug up the left pore and righty males go for the right one, leaving most females mated only on one side. Of course, having two genital openings means any female could mate again if she chooses in order to top off the other side — as long as the second lover used the opposite leg from her previous mate.
In contrast to the quiet waters of copepod singles bars, Nassau grouper go for an edgier scene. Solitary hunters, these grouper are the tigers of Caribbean coral reefs, growing to about three feet long and living for an average of sixteen years. Aggressive and highly territorial, they are not often seen together. Until the winter moons rise.
As the days shorten and temperatures drop, something awakens within these usually "homebody fish." For a few days each year, they go from hermit to hedonist: an uncontrollable itch drives them from their home reefs to travel up to a hundred miles or more to engage in a massive orgy. It's a remarkable journey cloaked in mystery. How do isolated individuals that barely stray more than the equivalent of a few blocks on a reef find a sex party that may occur all the way on the other side of an island — and find it in time? For Nassau grouper, the bacchanalia lasts for only two or three days each year.
Around Little Cayman Island, south of Cuba, researchers with the Grouper Moon Project have begun to unravel the mystery. Nassau grouper tagged with small acoustic transmitters can be heard by an array of underwater listening stations that encircle the island. The recorded "pings" of passing grouper paint a picture of how these lone fish seek each other out for their annual sex fest.
For many, it starts one or two days after the full moon, with a journey from their home turf to the outer boundary of the reef. There they hover, watching and waiting. And while they wait, some begin to slip into something a little more inviting.
Fish have a remarkable ability to change their coloration. Like birds, they often display bold, dramatic tones during mating season. In Nassau grouper, the switch is from a daily desert camouflage of mottled browns and beiges for more "black tie" attire: a sexy two-tone get-up that contrasts a bright white belly with a dark chocolate back. Others go for an all-brown look. Displaying these colors is one way they advertise their readiness to spawn. The darker and boldly contrasting shades seems to signal "friend with benefits" to other Nassau grouper — an important gesture by a normally highly territorial fish. Last thing anyone at an orgy wants is a swift fin-kick to the face for getting too friendly.
With their sexual intentions clearly on display, the fish watch for groups of other Nassau grouper, many similarly dressed, passing by along the border of the reef. They then swim out to join the party as it migrates toward the final destination. Some fish meander along the reef edge, swimming fair distances — even encircling the entire island — as they look for other fish and visit former breeding sites. Others simply swim out to the edge and wait for the caravan to come by them, slipping into the stream of fish when it does. The oldest and biggest fish tend to head for the site first, arriving earlier and staying longer than younger, smaller individuals.
What makes for the perfect love hotel for such traveling group spawners varies by species and region, but for most, a striking geologic formation often features in the mix: the edge of a steep drop-off or a large promontory that juts up or out into the open blue. These sites tend to have strong currents, which might help push newly fertilized eggs offshore and away from predators, or they may sweep the larvae in to safe habitat on the reef. There are several theories about what makes for a good spawning site, but it seems that location plus timing of the gathering combine to offer favorable conditions for newly conceived baby fish.
By two or three days after the full moon, the convoys of sexually aroused Nassau grouper swell in size as more and more hitchhiking fish join the group. By the fourth day, every single adult Nassau grouper from the waters surrounding Little Cayman can be found at the southwestern tip of the reef, an aggregation of four thousand fish that represents the entire breeding population of the island.
And that's where the problems lie. Migrating to the same spot year after year on a highly predictable schedule certainly helps fish find mates, but it also helps fishers find fish. Spawning aggregations offer an extremely lucrative fishing opportunity. There, in one small location, swim all the biggest fish from an otherwise scattered population. For fishers, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. On Little Cayman, when fishers first discovered a spawning aggregation in 2001, there were approximately seven thousand fish. Two years later, about three thousand Nassau grouper remained. A few fishers with simple hook-and-line gear removed more than half the total population.
Part of the reason why such enormous declines happened so fast has to do with the tenacity with which Nassau grouper seek out their sex parties. If Nassau grouper were more like people, then seeing a shrinking number of participants at the party might dampen the desire to join in a potential mass spawn of sperm and eggs (collectively called "gametes") — it takes a certain crowd for a place to feel inviting. As Dr. Brice Semmens, the lead researcher for the Grouper Moon Project, notes, "It's like showing up at a dive bar. There are a couple of snaggle-toothed individuals hanging around, but not the kind of folks you want to share your gametes with."
But Nassau grouper don't respond this way. Semmens and colleagues' research shows that as their numbers decline, Nassau grouper keep looking for fellow fish to follow; they keep showing up to the same spot on the reef, at the same time every year, and they stick around for even longer. The fewer fish in the group, the greater the amount of time the adults spend at the aggregation site.
Researchers still don't know why individuals hang around for extended periods as their populations shrink. Maybe it just takes longer for one or two of those particularly randy fish to show up and get the party started; or it could be that the cues to spawn depend on density, so the fish are waiting for their numbers to build. More data is needed to understand why they stick around and what spawning within these smaller aggregations looks like. What this means, however, is that remaining Nassau grouper will continue to seek out and form aggregations even as their numbers plummet, which provides fishers with ever-increasing and ample time to fish them out.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Sex in the Sea by Marah J. Hardt, Missy Chimovitz. Copyright © 2016 Marah J. Hardt. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Copyright Notice,Frontispiece,
Dedication,
Introduction: Getting Your Fins Wet,
1: The Quest: Seeking Sex in Saltwater,
2: Luring a Lover: The Art of Salty Seduction,
3: Flex Your Sex: Sex Change in the Sea,
Part 1: Sexual Intercourse,
4: The Penis Chapter: Sex as a Contact Sport,
5: Inner Chambers: Influencing Sex from the Inside Out,
Part 2: Sexual Outercourse,
6: Oceanic Orgies: Getting It On in Groups,
7: Synchronized Sex: A Neighborly Affair,
8: Turning Up the Sex Drive: How to Spark Successful Sex in the Sea,
Conclusion: The Sea Is One Sexy Beast,
Acknowledgments,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Resources: Diving A Little Deeper,
Index,
About the Author,
Photographs,
Copyright Page,
Related Subjects
Customer Reviews
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