Aquarium
For a long time I wanted to be a marine biologist when I grew up. I can't remember the exact ages that this was something I wanted to do, but I feel it was like ages 9-12 or 10-13 or something like that.
Looking back, that's sort of an odd job for a young person to latch onto. After all, most professional scientists spend a lot of time in labs doing work with data, and that was certainly not something that appealed to me then (and even less so now). But I'd had a few experiences that made me quite excited by ocean life and those really shaped what I was attracted to.
When I lived with my parents, we would go to the same beach town, and for many years rent the same beach house, for a few weeks every summer. I have so many fond memories of these times and, as someone who has not always been very happy, especially as a child, I think these were some of my happier times. I really love swimming, I really enjoy the weird weightless feeling and how every sense shifts in the water - hearing, smell, taste, touch, sight are all SO different. I love waves, a good sized wave to body surf, that's what I like. I like the freedom and the anonymity.
One year, my Mum booked us in for a rockpool ramble, or at least I think that's what it was called. The local eco-tourism business took people out when the tide was low at evening and we would pour over the rock platforms looking for what sea life was coming out to feed and move about. We would see a lot of crabs, a lot of anemones and, occasionally, an octopus. Writing it down now this seems like such a minor thing - a couple of crabs and one octopus, is that enough to really change a person? For me it definitely was.
I fell out of love with being a marine biologist, though I wish in high school I'd found ways to stay engaged in science. Now a lot of what I'm most interested in is adjacent to field ecology, sustainability science or botany. These are areas that I was always a bit interested in and, in a different world, it would have been great to be able to learn more about them, rather than chemical equations, cell structures and basic physics formulas. All are important, but I just couldn't stick with them when I was a teenager, I don't know why, I think I was quite a bad learner at that age.
On a holiday recently I got taken to an aquarium and found it just so exciting. I loved seeing all the fish and the tanks, all the displays and the wonderful weirdness of it all. The tanks, with their thick plastic, warp how we see often magnifying or elongating what something looks like. The aquariums are also dark, all the better to see the tanks and animals. It's such a weird and wonderful little world and I felt just a glimmer of that excitement and wonder that I remember feeling picking up a crab, seeing a small fish or watching the otherworldly octopus as a kid in Airey's Inlet.
It's nice, sometimes, to be reminded that the world changes, we grow, but often what makes us joyful is pretty similar. Maybe next time I'm in a funk I can go to the local aquarium.