Slices and Stacks--an exercise of getting my thoughts straight
Here are some musings on how I might put together the introduction to my dissertation where the three papers within are connected through what didn’t work instead of a unified idea. What’s floated to the surface is a hodgepodge including a bit on how water moves, a bit on how some equipment works and finally a bit on an underwater soundscape--none of this quite fits together so I’ve been gathering some old notes and writing to put my thoughts together. Since I probably can’t use these words in my dissertation, I thought I’d share them here.
Now that I’m in the final stages of my ocean based dissertation, I’ve been thinking about how to portray the interior workings of a fluid realm. How do I shift my perceptions from the surface that I inhabit to the three-dimensional world of my study area? If I can do this, how do I express/articulate it in the two-dimensional written word? Will shifting my perception allow me to find new ties between the biological world and the physical one?
Experiencing lift from an updraft or the spiralling tug of an eddy like those who live fully in a three-dimensional fluid would be exhilarating, but not an everyday occurrence for most of us. People inhabit a surface--not the two-dimensional Flatland--but we only interact with a minuscule layer compared to the three-dimensional fluid realms of the atmosphere and ocean. Birds in the sky and fish in the sea, navigate the invisible topography like we walk through rooms in a house--it's second nature too them.
Interacting directly with the ocean interior is problematic, instead I floated on the surface dipping instruments into the abyss. Later, in front of a computer, I took the typical reductionist view reducing the ocean to slices and stacks evolving through time--like a geological core, where a cylinder of rock is bored out and removed, except I don't remove the water, I just measure it.
This interplay between worlds of different dimensions reminds me of a night shift on a research vessel in Monterey Bay. It was 4 am, and we were waiting while the winch brought up our instrument from its trip a kilometer down. I stepped outside to combat encroaching sleepiness and the surreal view took my breath away. Oppressive inky blackness devoured the ship's lights just past the guard rails. I could feel the swell, but my eyes couldn't differentiate between sea and sky. The heaving sea surface merged with the sky forming a single canvas of darkness.
Our ubiquitous posse of gulls still surrounded the ship. Their white forms shone in the darkness with a moon-like intensity. Some flew, hanging in the sky, and some bobbed on the sea surface, wings folded. Without the visual boundary between sea and sky, the scene felt like I had stepped into a black and white M.C. Escher drawing where one form merges to another, the boundary blurred between them. That night, the gulls weren't bothered by the interface between their three-dimensional fluid world and the undulating surface of the sea. They could interact seamlessly with both worlds--something I can only dream about.