There.
I said it.
I mean, think about it. How many times have you viewed a program along the lines of the Blue Planet series and watched them show you the mating techniques of a sea urchin, or a coral reef? You don’t see a sweet little courtship ritual with one purple, spiny critter sliding up to another with flowers and chocolates, going out to dinner, and maybe a film, and then the first critter inviting the second up to its apartment to see its etchings. You don’t see the ‘27th Annual Great Barrier Reef Coral Polyp Cotillion and Bake Sale — proceeds to fund the Coral High School marching band’s trip to the Marianas Trench Division A Competition’, with all the awkward teenage polyps segregating into little groups of girl polyps and boy polyps, afraid to talk to each other or make the first move.
No, of course not. That would be civilized.
What do you see instead? Great hulking masses of urchin sperm being released wantonly into the abyss! Corals shamelessly spewing forth their reproductive components to be carried away on the whims of the tide! Clouds of gametes swirling in the communal soup! Hapless haploids with no direction, no guarantee that they will fulfill their sole purpose! I can almost hear the strains of Monty Python’s ‘Every Sperm is Sacred’ coming from the nearest Catholic sea-church, the Cardinal Tetras prostrating themselves before the altar, praying for the sins of their fishy brethren. Never mind the fact that they can’t see the altar through all the coral jizz and urchin spunk floating around, mingling with… well, just about everything, really.
Also never mind that cardinal tetras are actually freshwater tropical fish. I was cultivating an image. So sue me. (God knows the Catholic church will want my head on a pike for that last bit.)
Also also never mind that cardinal tetras are so named because of their predominantly red coloring and not because they look like mid-level church officials.
But I digress.
We were talking about fish sex. There are multitudes of ocean-dwelling creatures that reproduce in the same mass hopeful fashion as corals and urchins. They swim and concertina and suction around in their watery environs, spreading their seed like it’s no big deal, willfully ignoring the fact that maybe the other fish don’t want to swim around in their baby batter.
It’s indecent!
And it’s not just the other creatures that live in the sea that have to deal with it.
Think about it. Every time you go away for a well deserved tropical vacation and decide to take in a little swim in the delightfully warm turquoise waters you are swimming in fish spendings. Once you set foot in that water, you are — consciously or unconsciously — entering into a mass oceanic bacchanal. You are bathing in the juices of a thousand aquatic petite morts. A million marine O-faces were made in that half-cup of water you accidentally swallowed when you came up to breathe and a wave got you in the face.
It’s no wonder you’re dying for a cigarette by the time you get back to your beach towel.
It makes me wonder how much of the ocean is actually ocean, and how much of it is fish splooge. And for that matter, how much of it is fish waste? You’re not just swimming in fish wiener sauce, you’re also getting covered in fish shit. How many parts per million (or however they measure these things) of seawater is actually seawater?
Quick! Someone get me a grant writer! This is Very Important Research! These are questions that must be answered! For science!
Of course, there are a few select species living in our world’s oceans that have truly beautiful mating rituals. Seahorses dance. There is a species of puffer fish that creates stunning ‘nests’ in the sand on the ocean floor to woo its mate. The French Angelfish mates for life! How delightful! How thoughtful! How very unique and, frankly, adorable!
Oh well. That whole ‘survival of the fittest’ thing means that in order to perpetuate the species some critters have had to resort to flinging their baby-making goo into the ether and hoping for the best, the unpleasant side effect being the fact that everyone else then has to wade through their efforts to either exist — in the case of other ocean dwellers — or engage in aquatic recreation.
I will leave you with the following — a paraphrase of W.C. Fields injected into a flashback sequence from ‘Archer’:
This post brought to you by the 23-second video the Monterey Bay Aquarium put up on Twitter about urchin reproduction. HOW DOES FISH PORN NOT VIOLATE THE TWITTER TERMS OF SERVICE?!*
*I am not actually offended by fish porn.
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