Monday's Photo: Fire and Water

When I was a kid, I loved playing with burning candles -- teasing a stream of molten wax from the pool below the flame, then watching as the streams flowed down the taper before they cooled and hardened.

Fourth of July was another time for sanctioned play with fire. The best were the volcanic eruptions of colored sparks from cones and Roman candles.

Nature can conjure up her own spectaculars, as in this image captured by the folks at Volcano Discovery, who lead tours to volcanic regions around the world. They record the photo as documenting lava floating on the waves on the Big Island of Hawaii.

The shows don't stop at the surface.

Our colleagues at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute organized their own expedition to Hawaii in 2001 -- not to observe eruptions on land but their effects in the deep sea.

They were interested in submarine volcanic processes, and did considerable geologic work during the three-month cruise. But they also studied marine life they found in deep water off Hawaii, including amazing animals like this tripod fish.

It's not a species new to science, as are many others seen by MBARI researchers. But it's remarkable nonetheless, because people now have the technology -- and the curiosity -- to seek out life in the remote regions of our own ocean planet.

I say remote, but deep sea animals like the tripod fish aren't immune to our activities up on the surface.

There's drama and beauty in the interplay of fire and water when lava cascades into the sea. But our own survival may be more closely bound to what we're learning about the life-forms with whom we share this fragile world.

Comments

[raymond]

These are truly remarkable and beautiful photoghraphs. The one of the tripod fish reminds me of last summer when out fishing on a boat in Cyprus, when a school of flying fish flew past skimming the water at about four times the speed of our boat. A great experience which everyone should see at some time.