MALE SPEAKER: Hello, everyone.
We're very thrilled to welcome
Susan Middleton to Google
today.
She was the chair of the
Department of Photography
at the California Academy of
Sciences from 1982 to 1995.
She currently serves as a
research associate there
and has been on many very
interesting field trips
and field work, which she
will talk to us about today.
And, of course, she did get
that always exciting and always
enviable Guggenheim Fellowship
as a result of her work.
Her topic today is
Spineless, the Portraits
of Marine Invertebrates,
the Backbone of Life.
It's the result of seven years
of field work in the Pacific
Ocean, and it's no wonder that
the physical space at Google
that we're
broadcasting from today
is also called
the Pacific Ocean.
She's been instrumental
in the protection
of marine conservation areas
off the Hawaiian Islands,
resulting in the designation
of the National Marine Monument
that President Obama
put in a few years ago.
Her work has earned
praise and endorsements
ranging all the way up to Her
Deepness herself, Sylvia Earle.
And so please join me as Susan
discusses her photography
and her approach to capturing
these unique animals.
So thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
SUSAN MIDDLETON:
Thank you so much.
It's a pleasure
for me to be here
at Google in the Pacific
Ocean part of Google.
How appropriate is that?
Because I'm going to
be showing you today--
I'm going to be taking
you on a little journey
into the marine
invertebrate realm.
And I worked in three
different places,
all in the Pacific Ocean.
So all of the creatures that
I'm going to show you today
are residents of
the Pacific Ocean.
Just by way of a
little background,
I have been making portraits of
native flora and fauna, plants
and animals, for
over 30 years, and I
started focusing on federally
listed endangered species.
All of the creatures
I've photographed
are under the US flag.
And that's intentional because
I want to bring awareness
to the native flora and
fauna that really share
our own habitat as US citizens.
And I think oftentimes
we're unaware of them.
So I started with
what's sometimes
characterized as
charismatic megafauna.
So a lot of mammals,
birds, endangered species
that a lot of research
had been done on,
so they were well known.
And then over the
years, after six books,
each time a new
project commenced,
I was going a little bit more
for the less conspicuous, less
well known, understudied realm
of life, which I've learned
is equally important to sort
of how ecosystems function.
And I attach myself to
scientists to do my projects,
and my work really
bridges art and science.
I've long been interested in the
nexus between art and science,
and I feel that artists
and scientists share
a kind of motivation, which
is a quest for discovery.
And there's a lot of creativity
in the minds of scientists
that I've worked with
and many artists that I
work with as well.
And most of all, I
know myself, and am
very inspired by science.
And I see a lot of the
same motivations working.
So this last project
resulted in a book
that was just published called,
"Spineless, Portraits of Marine
Invertebrates, The
Backbone of Life."
And this is the
cover of the book,
and the image you saw just
before is the cover image.
And this is a juvenile
Pacific giant octopus,
the most beautiful animal.
And I've been doing
this for 30 years.
I think it's the most beautiful
animal I've ever photographed.
And that's saying
something because I've
photographed a lot of animals.
But this is a juvenile,
as I mentioned,
and it would grow into an adult
Pacific giant octopus, which
is the largest octopus
species in the world.
But it almost had, like, a big
attitude, even as a juvenile.
And I worked with
it over three days.
And I'll show you, as I
get a little bit further
on in my presentation,
how that happened,
how I actually make
these photographs.
This is a nudibranch,
a beautiful nudibranch
with very long
tendrils and tentacles.
Opalescent nudibranch
is the name of it.
And this looks very plant-like,
and in fact, part of it is.
The eel grass that you see and
the red algae attached to it
is plant, but the
star-shaped creature
is actually a stock jellyfish.
It's a jellyfish, and
those little pom-pom shapes
are feeding tentacles.
And this is a favorite organism
where I did a lot of field work
on San Juan Island in the
Northwest Coast waters.
They're kind of hard to find.
They're exquisitely beautiful,
and unlike this photograph,
they're constantly moving.
And to get it with all of
its star-shaped projectiles
extended like this
took a lot of patience.
I also worked on NOAA
research vessels,
off the coast of French
Frigate Shoals, which
is one of the islands in the
Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
There was a NOAA
vessel that went out
to that area
specifically looking
at marine
invertebrates, and also
in the Central Pacific around
Palmyra, Kingman, and Jarvis.
And this looks almost like
an extraterrestrial animal,
I think.
It's called a
white phantom crab,
and it was pulled up in a
retrofitted lobster trap
from several feet deep.
And the whole ship was staffed
with marine invertebrate
experts from around the world.
So we had the
experts on the ship.
This realm of life
tends not to be
funded as well, in
terms of the research.
And also expeditions
that are specifically
focusing on marine invertebrates
are few and far between.
So it was very exciting to
be able to be on this vessel,
photographing things that were
being collected, some of which
had never been seen
before, and some of which
have since been described
as new species to science.
And I'll get to that a
little bit more as I go on.
This is called a
four-lined flatworm.
I happen to love flatworms.
It's one of my favorite
kinds of animals,
and this is one of them.
And what I've learned is that
flatworms are very important
evolutionarily because they were
the first kind of animal that
had bilateral symmetry and
a central nervous system.
So we sort of stand
on the shoulders
of these humble creatures,
even though they
don't have shoulders.
This is a giant
fleshy scale worm.
I became very enamored
with the marine worms.
And it took me awhile,
because I sort of
have an aversion to
terrestrial worms.
I don't know why.
But in the marine realm, and
I'll show you as we go along,
the diversity of
shapes and colors.
And they're just
phantasmagorical.
Better than anything that Pixar
could come up with, I think.
And perhaps Pixar is
deriving some inspiration
from this realm as well.
This is a Taylor's sea
hare, and normally it
grazes on blades of eel grass.
And it camouflages beautifully,
as you can imagine.
And I'm sure you're noticing by
now that these images are not
typical nature photography.
I'm visually
isolating my subject
against a white or
a black background,
and I do that by
modifying aquariums.
They're all live animals.
They're in the water.
I make them as happy as I can,
and I'll show you some images
as we go on that
kind of give you
a sense of how the
images are achieved.
This is a lion's mane jellyfish.
They get huge.
This was, again, a juvenile.
And this is a brittle star.
It's interesting because
it's kind of a misnomer.
Brittle stars are
not really brittle.
There they're quite soft.
They're quite fluid in
the way that they move.
And that central disk
is not only soft,
but it must be succulent
and delicious for fish
because these
animals always hide.
They're never out in the open.
If you're a snorkeler or
a diver and you pick up
a piece of coral rubble,
oftentimes you'll
see these brittle
stars scurrying away
to avoid getting eaten.
This is a shrimp from
about 300 feet down
on one of those NOAA
research expeditions.
The sort of bluish tinge that
you see are actually eggs.
So this is a pregnant female.
And this is one of my favorites.
It's reproduced really
beautifully in the book,
and I can have really
beautiful prints made.
But it's hard projecting.
And the reason is because
it's a frosted nudibranch
and it's so delicate.
It's translucent.
It is a very, very
pale, lovely pink
and a very delicate,
lovely, beautiful animal.
This is one of the
new species to science
that I was fortunate enough
to be able to photograph.
And not only was
I fortunate enough
to be able photograph it, but
this is the only representative
of this species that
has ever been collected.
This was on a NOAA research
trip to French Frigate Shoals.
It was hauled up in
a baited lobster trap
from about 800 feet
down and collected.
In other words it was
euthanized and collected
because the scientists
onboard the vessel were fairly
sure it was probably
a new species.
The only they can
do the detective
work to determine
that is to actually
have the specimen, so they can
do the morphological research
but also so they can
do DNA sequencing.
And it turned out it is
a new species to science
and has been named and described
based on this actual animal.
I call it the stilt walker.
This is a three-lined
nudibranch.
And this is a black-eyed squid,
a beautiful, small animal
that I photographed at
Friday Harbor Marine Lab
off San Juan Island.
And this is sometimes
called a devil angel.
Usually it's called a sea angel.
It's a tiny, little
creature, and you
can see the sort of wing shapes
that it uses for locomotion.
But also, occasionally, it
protrudes these little things
that almost look like horns.
So one of my mentors and
muses, Gustav Paulay,
calls this a devil angel.
This is a fragile file clam.
Those are feeding
tentacles and also used
for locomotion, a really
spectacular animal.
And this gives you an idea of
the NOAA vessels that I was on.
This is the Hi'ialakai,
and it's dispatched
from Honolulu regularly,
usually annually or biannually,
to do coral reef
ecosystem surveys
up and down the Northwestern
Hawaiian Island Chain
and also throughout
the Central Pacific.
And I went on two of these
research expeditions,
as I mentioned earlier.
So this is the main
ship, and then there
are Zodiacs that get
dispatched from that main ship.
And you can see the
dive tanks here,
and that allows us
to get to places
that we couldn't get otherwise.
Very fast, they're mobile.
They're actually
call fast boats.
There very, very spiffy boats.
And then there's a crane
on the main vessel,
and they get lowered
and raised as needed.
This is inside the wet
lab on the NOAA vessel.
It's kind of a
small space, and I
was sharing it with
10 other researchers.
So we had blue tape, and
we'd each have, like,
maybe a foot and a half or two
feet maximum of counter space.
And this is Scott Godwin, who's
one of the world's leading
experts on hermit crabs as well
as other marine invertebrates.
And he was collecting
some wonderful specimens,
keeping them happy in
the lab, so that they
could be looked at by the
scientists and, in my case,
photographed.
And here we have fresh
water being pumped in
from outside the vessel
and some animals waiting
for their portraits.
And these five-gallon
buckets were
kind of like little holding
areas, where animals would
wait for their
portraits to be made.
And this is actually my
little area in the wet lab,
and you can see a
little bit closer.
There I am, with red hair,
but it is me a couple of years
ago photographing a tiger
cowrie, a live tiger cowrie.
So you can see this
is an aquarium,
and I've modified it
for the photography
so it has a white bottom.
And then I actually have
a piece of white Plexiglas
behind the aquarium,
that you can't
see in this picture, that
creates the white background.
And I'm lighting
it from behind so
that I can eliminate the
shadows or at least control
the shadows.
And then I'm hand
holding the key light.
So I basically have
the camera in one hand
and a light on the other
and a lot of patience.
And this is the final
photograph of the tiger cowrie.
You know, most people have
seen these beautiful shells
because they are spectacular.
But most people
haven't seen the animal
that lives inside the shell.
And the animals that
live inside the shells
are, of course, even
more spectacular.
And they make those homes.
So this is the gray,
fleshy part of the animal--
is the animal that's
almost completely come out
of the shell.
It's called a mantle.
It can completely
cover its own shell.
This is a hanging-stomach jelly
from around San Juan Island.
And this is a smooth
brown peanut worm.
Again, you know, it took me
awhile to warm up to the warms.
But I decided after
looking at this for a while
and spending some time with
Mary Rice, who is 90 years old
and has spent her life becoming
an expert on these animals.
They're called sipunculids.
She kind of turned
me on to them.
I said, well, how
long do they live?
She said, oh, I have pets
that have been in my lab
for 30 years.
I thought, 30 years, oh my God.
So I gave them a
second look and decided
they looked like
Henry Moore sculptures
and they were beautiful
in their simplicity.
And this is the picture
that I was able to make.
This is a [? sub-auricular ?]
[? Kelly ?] clam.
This particular one
spent its entire life
inside a beer bottle and
was protected in there.
It got too big to get
out, but that's actually
fine with these
clams because they
get the protection of
being inside the bottle
and they can extend their siphon
out the neck of the bottle
to feed.
This is another one of those
beautiful brittle stars.
I photographed a lot
of these because I
loved their graphic shapes.
And every single
one was different,
so there's lots of them.
These are sea slugs, also a
startling variety of shapes,
forms, colors, textures.
And that's what really drew
me to the marine invertebrate
realm as an artist,
was the inherent sort
of design and elegance
expressed in this realm of life.
It's far more diverse
than terrestrial fauna.
Though terrestrial
fauna is wonderful
and I spent many, many
years focusing on that,
I was just kind of blown
away by the animals
in the invertebrate realm.
And it's interesting
to note that 98%
of the described animals
in the sea, in the ocean,
are in fact invertebrates.
And as I've been
taught by scientists,
that number probably
is closer to 99.9%
because so many
animals in this realm
have yet to be
discovered and described.
So we're vastly outnumbered.
The marine mammals are
vastly outnumbered,
and even in the
terrestrial realm,
we're vastly outnumbered by
the marine invertebrates.
And not only that.
It's this invertebrate
realm that
really creates the foundation
for the marine ecosystem
and for the
terrestrial ecosystem.
It really is responsible.
These animals, collectively,
along with the plants,
are responsible for
the air we breathe
and the soil to grow our
food and the water we drink.
All of it.
So they're important,
and they're also
exquisitely beautiful.
This is two nudibranchs
that are kind of
on top of each
other a little bit,
called the pustulus nudibranchs.
And I think they look
like licorice candy.
And this is a wonderful
animal called a
[? melobi, ?] and it
grazes on sea grass.
It's just-- they're just beyond.
This is a decorator crabs, and
you'll see several of these
as I go along.
These crabs, they go round
and they just collect stuff.
A lot of times it's
algae, sometimes
it's other marine
animals like hydroids.
And they kind of paste it.
They have a little, like, glue
kind of stuff they can secrete,
and they attach
it to themselves.
And every one has
a different style.
Some of them like algae.
Some of them like red algae.
Some of them like brown algae.
But the idea is that
they kind of blend in.
It's camouflage.
Here's another one
that's got some hydroids
attached to its head, like
a kind of a wild chapeau.
They check it to make sure
that everything is in place.
It's almost like
somebody who's fastidious
about their clothing.
This is a wonderful anemone
from the Central Pacific
around Palmyra,
Kingman, and Jarvis.
And one of the things that I
can achieve by doing photography
in this way is that
you get to see more.
So even the scientists who
are very familiar with some
of these organisms would come
up and watch me photograph
because, in this
case, I was told,
well, you know, when
you're underwater
you never see the stalk because
it's buried in the sand.
And you may see
only just a portion
of this kind of radial
portion of the animal.
So you can see a lot more this
way, by visually isolating.
This is called the
strawberry drupe-- again,
a gorgeous shell, but a
beautiful green animal
that lives inside.
So you see it kind of gradually
revealing itself here.
One of the ways that I
achieved the photographs was
to piggyback on research done
at Friday Harbor Marine Lab
off San Juan Island.
And this is one of the students.
She had found-- this
is her favorite animal.
It's called a nereis,
or a banner sea nymph.
And she had found one
complete and whole,
because they're very
difficult to collect
without breaking them.
They're fragile.
And so I was able
to photograph it.
It had beautiful
iridescence and actually has
this proboscis that it can
push out when it either
wants to be scary or
perhaps assist in eating.
But that's a
retractable part there.
And I was told about
it, so of course I
had to wait and wait and
wait and wait until I saw it.
So you see those black
mandibles in that picture.
This is another
little nudibranch.
Nudibranchs have these
interesting projectiles
which are called rhinophores,
and they're like sniffers.
They're chemosensory perceivers.
So that's what you're
seeing on the front end
of this little nudibranch.
This is called a
treetop nudibranch.
And this is an anemone that you
see in four stages of opening.
That took about three
hours of waiting.
That's called a
Christmas anemone
from around San Juan Island.
And who knows, you
know, what was going on?
I sort of assumed that,
well, maybe it just
took a while for it to feel
comfortable in the tank.
Maybe it was hungry.
Who knows?
A lot you don't get to know.
This is an amazing
marine worm called
a ground-digger dumbbell worm.
I think it looks kind of like
one of the Blues Brothers.
But there again, an
interesting sort of wild
shape and character going on.
This is another flatworm,
orange-rimmed flatworm.
And this is another flatworm,
the Pacific spotted flatworm.
They're very beautiful,
very delicate.
And as I mentioned before,
they are the closest thing
that's living to the animal
that jumped from sponges, which
is a loose assemblage
of individual cells,
into a huge advancement
evolutionarily
of bilateral symmetry and
a central nervous system
and one-end leads--
a lot of inventions
along with the emergence
of this animal.
This is a hanging stomach
jelly that's blue.
One of the things
I'm also trying to do
is actually make a portrait.
I do consider myself a portrait
photographer, really, more
than a nature
photographer because I'm
trying to capture the character
of an individual organism.
So not just
capturing a species--
it's not really scientific
documentation, per se,
though sometimes
it's used for that.
So it takes a lot of
watching and paying attention
to an individual organism.
And sometimes I go back and
photograph another individual
of the same species
because it's just
different enough to warrant it.
So this is another jellyfish.
And this is a very interesting
animal called a comb jelly.
And recently I read, I believe
in "National Geographic," where
this animal is of particular
interest now to scientists
because the nerve cells
that exist in comb jellies
are thought to be the
earliest nerve cells,
evolutionarily, and
certainly the only ones that
are extant now that represent
those first nerve cells.
So they're being
watched very carefully.
And they also are very
beautiful because they iridesce,
and the cilia,
little tiny fibers,
move constantly and create these
beautiful, shimmering color
patterns.
And these are called sea
gooseberry, a similar thing
with these beautiful,
shimmering color
patterns that are
constantly moving.
And this is called a
curly-headed spaghetti worm.
A lot of these animals
have terrific names.
And normally this animal will
be completely covered with sand.
It makes a stand tube.
It lives under the
sand, and then it
extends its tentacles
out to feed.
So I spent hours sort
of cleaning it up,
getting rid of all the sand so
you could really see the animal
and how it's built,
how it's made.
This is called a
broadbase tunicate.
It's a sea squirt, and
evolutionarily it's
relatively-- relatively, I
say-- close to human beings.
It looks more like a vegetable.
But scientists broadly divide
multi-celled animal life--
the metazoans, which includes
us-- into 34 categories.
And those are called
phyla, P-H-Y-L-A.
So of the 34 phyla,
33 are invertebrates.
And the 34th, Chordata,
includes us as the vertebrates,
but it also includes
some invertebrates.
And the sea squirt is very
closely related to Chordata.
So what I've learned and what
I want to pursue in future work
is that a lot of times these
distinctions and categories
are based on anatomies
that can only
be seen in the early
developmental stages,
the embryonic stages.
Later, we change.
We differentiate, and some
of those characteristics
are difficult if not
impossible to see
but quite clear in
the early stages.
So the history
makes a difference.
These are all nudibranchs,
different species,
different shapes, colors.
I couldn't resist doing that.
Sometimes-- I mean, usually,
I visually isolate one animal.
But in this case this urchin was
cradling this beautiful little
[INAUDIBLE] crab, and I thought,
oh, they're wonderful together.
I'll just photograph
them together.
This is one of my favorites,
called a stubby squid.
You never know what
an animal's going
to do when they're
put in the tank.
And so I watch for
awhile, and usually I
watch before the animal
goes into the tank.
And in this case, I
just couldn't believe it
when the animal kind of
propped itself up on its legs
and assumed this gesture.
But it did.
I can't get these
animals to do anything.
They just do what
they do, and I try
to wait until they're
relatively at ease.
Though I don't know if that's
quite accurate-- but relatively
relaxed in the tank.
I don't want a picture
of a stressed out animal.
So I try and keep the water
at the right temperature,
filter it for
clarity, and then I
take my cues from
the scientists,
who know these animals best.
This is called the Tahitian
glass sausage, great name.
It's a sea cucumber.
And this also is a sea cucumber,
the black spotted sea cucumber.
This is just the end, showing
the emergent feeding tentacles.
And this was an
incredible experience,
photographing this
stiff-footed sea cucumber,
because Dr. Gustav
Paulay had collected
the animal right off
of San Juan Island.
But all I could see--
those beautiful tree-like
extended tentacles
were not extended.
They were all retracted when
the animal came in the lab.
So it was kind of like
this white shag rug thing.
And he said, you don't
see these very often.
And even less often do you
see the emergent tentacles.
But he said, maybe if
you wait long enough,
you'll be able to see
that and photograph it.
And it took days for the animal
to feel comfortable enough
to fully extend these
beautiful tree-like tentacles.
So those are used for feeding
and sensing the environment,
but can, in an instant,
be retracted for safety.
This is another sea cucumber,
called a pedal sea cucumber.
And, again, this red
sort of feathery form
can be retracted in an instant.
Those are feeding tentacles,
and when they're retracted
it just looks kind
of like a pink lump.
And it's very hard, kind of
a cuticle kind of material
that the animals are made of.
So it's quite hard to the touch.
These, probably, most
of you have seen.
They're, you know, the
classic gooseneck barnacles,
but it was nice to be able
to look at them in a slightly
different way and to visually
isolate them in the photograph.
This was one of the
biggest surprises for me.
I don't know how many of you
have seen beautiful white egg
cowries.
Beautiful shells, they're
not endangered, fortunately.
And a lot of people covet them.
I have one on my
dashboard in my car.
But a lot of people
collect them and
their beautiful,
white shell, high
gloss, the highest gloss you
can imagine, a pure white shell.
And lo and behold, the animal
that lives inside the shell
is black like this.
It looks like the
night sky, and I
had to wait a long time
for the animal to emerge.
But it was such a
revelation, this black animal
with these beautiful
white dots would
live inside this pristine,
beautiful white shell.
This is another
type of sea urchin.
And here we have the
airstrip nudibranch,
tiny little pink nudibranchs.
And this is an
interesting thing.
This is a crab.
I showed you earlier
some collector crabs
that collected algae
for camouflage.
This is a crab
that actually hooks
on another organism, in this
case a sea pen, onto its back.
So that from above it
probably looks like a sea pen,
or it could confuse a predator.
Who knows?
And perhaps the sea pen gets
some mobility and table scraps
out of the arrangement.
In this case, the same kind
of crab collects a fire sponge
and keeps it propped
up like that.
And fire sponges, I've had
the unfortunate experience
of touching a fire
sponge, and they
have little spicules that
are extremely painful.
And so this is a good
defense for this crab
to keep that fire sponge
up there like that.
This is called a [? Columbia ?]
[? dodo. ?] It's the tiny,
tiny, little animal that almost
looks like a glass figurine--
lovely, delicate.
And this is a Puget Sound king
crab, a really gorgeous animal.
Everybody at the Friday Harbor
Marine Lab loves these animals.
And so this particular one
was being kept as a pet
by one of the scientists there
in a tank for observation.
I was able to photograph it,
and this is a close-up up
of the face of a
Puget Sound king crab.
I mean, just spectacular colors.
Somebody asked me
the other day, do you
enhance the colors
in your photographs?
And I say, no.
I mean, the real challenge
here is getting the colors
to be rendered anywhere near
as spectacular and as saturated
as they are.
It's a whole other world.
This is Friday
Harbor Marine Lab.
This is their dock on San
Juan Island, Washington State,
where I did quite a bit of the
field work for this project.
And this is Dr. Gustav Paulay,
who I worked with extensively
over the last seven years.
And he's searching for
marine invertebrates
here on one of the
rubber tire bumpers
off the dock, which proved to
be a very, very fertile search.
So they exist
sometimes in what one
might think of as
unlikely places.
But this tire bumper
was a treasure trove
of marine invertebrates.
It's a healthy
marine environment,
which of course helps.
And this is on the research
vessel called the Centennial,
and there's a variety
of collection techniques
that were employed.
One of them, dredging, and
because it's not a coral reef
habitat, we could actually
drag this for short distances
on the bottom, collect
various things-- you never
know, it's like a surprise
package each time--
and then haul it
up and let it loose
in these big trays
on the vessel.
And of course, there's all
kinds of algae and wonderful
marine invertebrates here
that have been collected.
The students were very excited
about collecting things.
And we were trying
to separate things,
so that we didn't
have animals that
would eat each other
in the same bucket.
And these animals were
awaiting their portrait.
You can see in the sort
of lower left here,
there's kind of this
pink, round-shaped thing.
And that's the
pedal sea cucumber
that I showed you a
little bit earlier that
had this beautiful, red,
feathered protrusion.
But that's the way it looks.
Like, if you were diving
or something or snorkeling,
you'd probably see it looking
like this, with surprise
yet to come.
And these were selected
out for special treatment,
some very beautiful
mollusks, there.
And this is the
actual lab environment
where the scientists
and students work.
And these are called sea tables.
And fresh seawater is pumped in
front the harbor just outside.
And that marine lab has been
there for over 100 years,
so it's a wonderful place,
kind of like a west-coast Woods
Hole where marine
research is done.
And animals can be kept happy
here for observation and study.
So it was a great environment
for me to work in.
Here I am again in the corner
of that lab with a little area
set up for photography.
And that's my little aquarium,
and I'm handholding, again,
the light and photographing
a hermit crab here.
It's just emerging.
So you can see I have a special
fondness for hermit crabs,
and so I photographed
a lot of them.
This is a very interesting
nudibranch called a tritonia.
A lot of neurological
research is
being done on these animals
because their brain cells are
big enough and there
are few enough of them
so that the relationship between
behavior and these brain cells
can be teased out more
easily than with a more
complex animal.
So these have been
research animals
for a number of years there.
They're shape shifters.
This is what they look like,
or can look like, looking down
because they can
flatten themselves out.
That's another thing.
Because these
animals are spineless
and they have
hydrostatic skeletons,
in other words they depend on
the water for their support,
their shapes are
wonderfully diverse.
And they truly are
shape shifters.
These are [? pycnogonids, ?]
which are like water spiders,
sea spiders.
In most of these pictures,
there are two of them
that are kind of in tandem.
Some of these pictures,
they're on top of each other.
This is two of
them, almost looking
like a snowflake superimposed.
These are worm tubes.
These worms builds
tubes out of sand,
and not any sand grain will do.
They're very picky
about sand grains.
Quite a bit of research
has been done on these.
And this is the animal
that lives inside.
It's called a phornoid.
It's its own phyla.
A lovely animal, but it can
retract inside this tube.
And this is the tube built
by another tube-building worm
called an ice cream cone worm.
And again, they are very
selective about sand grains.
They're like little artisans.
You know, they're
like little masons.
And they have a
kind of secretion
that will hold the sand
grains together, like a mortar
that they can build these
protective tubes from.
This again is Dr. Gustav Paulay,
and he is reaching down, down,
down to try and
capture a diopatra,
a beautiful tubeworm that
lives deep in the sand.
And this is low tide up on
San Juan Island, False Bay.
And at this point he was
saying, I need an arm extension.
It was like he could feel it,
but he needed to go deeper.
The students were trying
to help by digging
the hole a little bit bigger.
And fortunately he
was able to extract
this worm, complete and
whole, with its tube.
And he's here showing
it to students.
And it was pouring down rain,
which it oftentimes is there.
But this is the worm that
lives inside this tube,
the diopatra-- just
absolutely fantastic
with iridescence and
marvelous projectiles.
And, oh, it's just
beyond description.
And this is a feather
duster worm, also
a tube-building worm.
And it's got some
green algae that's
sort of festooning it's tube.
But it can retract those
tentacles, just faster
than the eye can track.
But of course here, it
almost looks like a flower.
They're emerged for feeding.
This is another one of
those crazy decorator crabs.
This one was such a mess.
It only liked this color,
this sort of, like,
very neutral kind of
beigey-brown color.
And it had algae,
it had hydroids,
it had all kinds of stuff
on it as you can see.
And I kept trying to kind
of clean up the tank,
and then I just gave up.
I thought, well, part of
the character of this animal
is just to be a mess.
So I'll just let it be a mess.
And here is a close-up.
If you look right in the
middle of this picture,
you can probably see
the eye, kind of.
So yeah, it's wild, but probably
functions very effectively
for this animal in
terms of camouflage
and avoiding predators.
This is a simple-- I mean, I say
simple because common-- mussel
that I saw in a tide pool.
But I was really attracted to
the patterning on the shell.
And I collected it
and looked up close
and realized that all
those little things are
in fact animals.
They're little
tube-building worms,
and the largest animal
here you see is a scallop.
There's bryozoans, all kinds
of wonderful things happening,
so it's like a little
living community.
And my editor in New York
at Abrams, Andrea Danese,
said, oh, I want an evening
gown that looks like that.
So who knows?
Maybe someone will be
inspired to do that.
This is an ornate latirus,
a beautiful shell but even
more beautiful animal-- this
gorgeous, red carnelian animal
emerging from the shell
and another mollusk
with the animal just emerging.
And this is a pom-pom crab,
really neat adaptation.
The little pom-poms that you see
that the crab is holding onto
are in fact stinging anemones.
And these kind of crabs,
this is their lifestyle.
They find these anemones
and they keep them tight.
And the anemones
are beneficiaries
of this arrangement because they
get mobility and table scraps.
The crab gets the benefit
of having little boxing
gloves that will sting
a potential predator.
Probably many of you have
seen these cone snails.
Again, people love to
collect the shells.
This is called a textile cone.
But you see the animal
here coming out.
These are very
dangerous, actually.
You see a little kind
of spear right up there,
and that is filled
with a toxic venom.
It has been known
to kill people.
So when you handle
this animal, you
must handle it from the other
end or not handle it at all.
But they're quite
amazing, the cone snails,
whole group of animals.
This is another
one of the animals
that I photographed
that has since
been described as a new species.
This is called the
[? juana ?] [? juana ?] crab.
You can kind of
pick out the eyes.
It looks a little bit like
Jabba the Hutt, I think.
But it was collected from
about 800 feet down on the NOAA
vessel around French
Frigate Shoals.
So the two animals
that I've shown you
that are new species to science
all live below 800 feet.
So there are amazing
realms of life
the deeper you go, too,
that are less known.
These are called Venuses girdle.
Dr. Gustav Paulay, when I
was on my first field trip
for this project-- which was
about seven years ago now--
he came up to me.
He'd just met me.
He saw my photographic setup.
He came up to me on the
ship with a Mason jar
with the lid on that
was filled with water.
And he said, if you
can photograph this,
you can photograph anything.
And I said, I don't
see anything in there,
and he just smiled
and walked away.
And I thought, hmm.
So I went out on the deck.
There was some sun.
And I held it up to
the sun, and finally I
saw these little
shimmery things in there.
And this is what they were.
Probably the transparency
of these animals
served them well because
they can avoid predators.
Because it was very
difficult to even see them,
but it was also very
difficult to photograph them.
But I did it.
Very interesting, these next two
pictures are of mantis shrimp.
They distinguish themselves
in a couple of ways,
but the main way
is color receptors.
We humans have three
sets of rods and cones,
color receptors.
Mantis shrimp have 16.
They have the most
sophisticated visual acuity
of any animal known.
They can see things that
we can't even imagine,
plus they can see 3D and
they can see 360 degrees
without turning their head.
This one has the extra added
advantage of a tail end
that looks a lot like an urchin.
So no one's going to
mess with this animal.
This is another species
of green sea urchin.
And these are
called ribbon worms.
They're really long.
They can stretch long,
long, long, long, long,
you know, unimaginably long.
And this is a sea cucumber,
called a leopard sea cucumber
from the mid Pacific, and I
love the patterning on the side.
So I just kind of
did this close-up.
It's very, very
inspirational, I think.
The colors, designs,
and textures,
just from an aesthetic point
of view, they're wonderful.
This is a pretty
cool little creature
with big sort of paddle thumbs
from surround San Juan Island.
And this is a frilled dog welt.
And again one of these
very diaphanous frosted
nudibranchs-- I think,
you know, Frank Gehry may
have been inspired
by this animal.
I don't know.
It's really hard to
see on the screen,
but it does render
beautifully in the book.
It's just very
architectural and beautiful.
This is a necklace
worm and a fuzzy crab
and another kind of anemone.
And this is a
diamondback nudibranch.
And this is a scallop.
I asked another scientist
that I've learned a lot from,
[? Dr. Cohn ?] from
University of Washington.
I said, well, why do
scallops have so many eyes?
And he said, because they
don't have necks, of course.
Oh, OK.
This is a conch.
And again this is a shell that
a lot of people have seen,
but seeing the animal is
a much more rare thing.
You can see the eye kind
of protruding up here.
And this is the foot that's
coming out of the shell.
It can move very quickly.
And this is a beautiful
marbled shrimp,
from around French
Frigate Shoals.
And this is my favorite of
all the decorator crabs,
I guess probably because
it's just the most colorful.
This crab collected a lot
of red and green algae
and some hydroids coming
out of its snout there.
And this is a
giant spider conch.
You can just see the eye,
just checking things out
to see if it's safe to come out
and make a run for it, which
is what he's doing here.
This is another one of these
really, really beautiful
nudibranchs, and this is a very
old, evolutionarily, leaf foot
shrimp, kind of a living fossil
and a pregnant one at that.
And this is an 18-scaled worm.
And this is just beautiful to
see how this animal is actually
structured.
These are, like, little plates
that it adorns itself with.
And this is a sea cucumber
nudibranch that kind of
mimics a sea cucumber
in patterning,
but it's in fact a nudibranch.
And this is just
different shapes
that that animal can assume.
This is a clown
nudibranch, and this
is the first time I ever tried
to do a portrait of an animal
still in the egg.
So these are young
squid in the egg case.
And then a little bit
of a close-up, you
can get a sense of
the animal developing.
And here is just after hatching.
This is a leaf flatworm.
This drama unfolded
right under my lens.
I was so surprised.
The flatworm is
the animal that you
see at the top that
resembles a leaf.
And then there's a nudibranch,
a dark, little animal
to the lower left.
And then you see,
in the lower right,
this flatworm engulfed the
nudibranch and consumed it.
I ran to the scientists.
I said, I don't know
what's happening.
It seems like this flatworm
is eating the nudibranch.
And they said, oh, well,
that's exactly what you're
seeing because flatworms
are carnivores.
So I'm really glad that
these flatworms are not
the size of double beds because
we'd be in trouble, I think.
They-- sometimes I
have nightmares--
could just wrap around me
and consume me with enzymes.
This is another
wonderful decorator crab,
different style,
different taste in what
it likes to attach to itself.
Yet another one, this one
liked red kind of knee pads.
And this was on the vessel
at Friday Harbor Lab.
This was a plankton tow.
So this apparatus
that you see is just
towed alongside the
vessel which moves,
and it collects the
animals that actually
live in the water column.
And Sylvia Earle-- who
wrote a wonderful forward
for the book,
"Spineless," and with whom
I've been in the
field many times,
and I've known her
for many decades--
told me when we were walking
on the beach at Midway
a few years ago, she knew
I was working on this book,
and she said, well, what are you
thinking in terms of a title?
And I said "Spineless"
and then the subtitle
could be "Portraits of
Marine Invertebrates,
The Backbone of
Life in the Sea."
And she said, no, it's not just
backbone of life in the sea.
She said it's the
backbone of life
because this realm
of marine animals
is the foundation for all
of life on the planet.
And she speaks beautifully
about the blue heart
of the planet being
the ocean itself.
And she talks about the
water literally being alive,
and it is.
This is Dr.
[? Allan Cohn ?] looking
at some of the water that was
collected in that plankton tow.
And this, you can't
even see, really,
but you get some
sort of impression
of all of the tiny
animals that live
in the water column
in healthy places.
The water is literally alive.
And this is a lovely mollusk
that actually started
laying eggs as I
was photographing.
You never know what's going to
happen in front of your lens,
and they carry on
with their lives,
which is of course what I want.
It's a top snail, and these are
some of the eggs that it laid.
This is at Friday
Harbor Marine Lab.
We were out on a field trip,
and I heard a lot of excitement.
These were students
and scientists, both.
And people were gathering.
I knew something great
had been discovered.
And Gustav showed me.
This is his hand
holding this flatworm.
He said this is
a giant flatworm.
It's the largest
flatworm in the world.
It's rare.
I've never seen one here.
I've known about it.
I've read about it.
It's the first time
I've ever seen one.
Do you want to photograph it?
And I looked at
it and I thought,
I don't think I'm going to
be able to do much with that.
It's just a brown blob.
Some of the other flatworms
have these beautiful patterns,
just stunning.
But this one, it's big,
but in a photograph,
you can't tell how big it is.
But I said, OK, I'll try.
And he said, well, if we
take it back to the lab,
you have to promise me
that you'll bring it
back to this exact
spot tomorrow morning
because there aren't
that many of these.
So I was like, OK, I'll do that.
I'll take special care.
And once in the lab, this
animal assumed the most amazing
gestures.
It was like a contortionist.
It had an amazing
repertoire of things
that it could do with its body.
All the students
gathered around.
The scientists gathered around.
And we were pretty sure that
we were witnessing something
that humans had
never seen before.
Because who would ever,
like, be able to see this?
You'd have to,
like, put in a tank
and be convinced to
do so, which I was.
And then just let
it do its thing.
And so I learned a lot
from this because it
was far from a brown blob
in front of the camera.
It's one of my favorite
images, actually, now.
This is a day octopus.
Octopus are my favorite of
all the marine invertebrates.
They are the smartest by far.
You know when you
look at an octopus
that someone's home there.
They look back at you.
They're great escape artists.
They can change their
color, patterns, textures,
faster than the eye can track.
They are very successful,
evolutionarily, cephalopods.
And these are some pictures
of different octopus
in earlier stages.
The last one-- this
one also is a juvenile.
It's the cover octopus
but a different image
of that particular animal.
And here is a close
up of the eye.
These are chromatophores,
these little sacks of pigment,
that respond to
impulses from the brain.
Octopus kind of wear their
heart in their sleeve.
And they show and
can react vis-a-vis
their chromatophoric
expressions,
quite beautiful to see.
This is an octopus
with it's eye closed.
And this was out
also on a field trip.
These are also a member
of the cephalopod family,
and they don't have much of
a repertoire of behavior.
They're called
[? kitans, ?] and they're
quite primitive but
quite beautiful.
They're like jewels that tend
to attach themselves to rocks.
This is kind of a sample of
the different shapes and forms
that [? kitans ?] come in.
The one in the lower
right is curled up.
They can do that.
They can actually
roll themselves up
into a little ball if need be.
And this is another photograph
of that beautiful stalked jelly
that I showed you earlier.
I photographed--
this is the same kind
of animal only on
a black background.
I was quite fascinated
with photographing them.
And these are sea stars.
All of us are familiar
with sea stars,
and there are many, many
shapes and sizes of sea stars.
They are top-line predators
in their marine environment,
so most of the other
animals are afraid of them.
This is a little
series of hermit crabs.
I'm going to wind up my
presentation with hermit crabs.
And this is a hermit
crab that's actually
living inside a sponge.
That big orange form is
a sponge, a live sponge,
that presumably gets
the benefit of mobility
out of that arrangement.
It seems to work
for both parties.
More hermit crabs, and
each of these images
is the same species
of hermit crab,
but different choice
of shell on the part
of each individual crab-- so
different homes, same species
of hermit crab,
pretty much based
on shells that are available
to be had in their environment.
Sometimes there is
not a lot of choice.
This one on the
bottom, of course,
had the luxury of being able
to inhabit this beautiful cone
snail shell.
But these are all
the same species
of crab, vastly,
wildly different homes.
Same here.
The one on the bottom, you know,
that's kind of a damaged shell.
But crab is making it work
until he finds a better one.
This is what I call the nudist.
So this is a hermit
crab, on the upper left,
without a shelf or any
protection whatsoever.
So that's the abdomen,
and it has little hooks
on the end of the
abdomen that it
can grab onto the
inside of a shell.
And of course, then once
I introduced this shell,
it was coveting that
shell and quickly
jumped inside for protection.
Hermit crabs really don't like
to be without that protection
because they're so vulnerable.
That abdomen area is really,
really soft and tasty,
I'm imagining.
So this is the last image
of my presentation today.
This is a hermit crab that is in
a shell that has two anemones.
There's an anemone on each end
of the shell, that's not open
here, but can open.
And then there's another
anemone on the front,
and then there's a
tube-building worm.
And then there's
what turned out to be
a very rare barnacle on the top.
The scientists were way more
excited about the barnacle
than they were about the crab.
So it's kind of fun to
piggyback with these scientists
because they're like
kids, very enthusiastic.
And of course, artists
are the same way.
So there were a
lot of discoveries
to be made in this
realm of life.
And before I close
and open it up
to questions, which
is my favorite part,
I just would like to say that in
the process of doing this field
work, I was working with a
lot of different scientists.
And some of them were
climate scientists.
I shared some space
in the wet lab
with a NOAA scientist who
was collecting water samples
and monitoring for ocean
acidification levels.
And he was pretty alarmed
at what he was seeing,
and that was several years ago.
And I've kept up, somewhat,
with this research.
I think that if these animals
could speak, all these animals
that I've showed you here today,
they would cry out for help.
Their habitats, which is
the marine environment,
that water is becoming
increasingly more acid.
The pH is changing.
This is well known.
It's a simple
chemistry experiment.
So much of the fossil
fuel emissions,
the carbon sink is what
it's oftentimes referred to,
have been absorbed
by the oceans.
And with that, the oceans
become more acidified.
Most of these animals
depend on calcium carbonate
for their life.
They need the calcium
to build their shells,
and they extract
it from the water.
And if there's less
of it in the water,
they have a harder time
laying down their shells.
And also once their
shells are laid down,
there's the risk of the
acidified waters dissolving
their shells.
So particularly, corals
and mollusks are at risk.
But all these marine
invertebrates, virtually
all of them, depend on
calcium carbonate to live.
And without a healthy
marine environment
with these animals thriving,
we don't thrive well, either.
So they can't cry out
for help, literally,
but I'm kind of, like,
being their vehicle here.
So with that, are there
any questions or comments
that anybody would
like to offer?
AUDIENCE: Now, my one question
I had during all your pictures
was I had no idea of
the scale of anything.
SUSAN MIDDLETON:
That's intentional.
So his comment, question,
which is a good one-- and I
saw your hand up
earlier, but I thought
I just have to wait until
later for questions--
was a good one, which is, I
have no idea when I'm looking
at these images how
big anything is.
What's the scale?
In the book, it's the same.
And that is one of the magic
things about photography,
is that you don't get to
know how big something is
unless the photographer wants
you to by including something
that is a scale reference.
In the book, in the back, there
are wonderful profiles written
by [? Dr. Bernadette Holtus ?]
about each animal.
And included with that
is scale information.
And I collected that
in my field notes,
but it isn't the first
thing I want people
to know because many of
these animals are tiny.
They're not all tiny,
but many of them are.
And I kind of want to present
them as heroic and monumental.
And so I don't want people to
know, first off, how big it is,
but I want people to be able
to find out how big it is.
In a presentation like this,
I just sort of elect not to.
Sometimes I would say
the [? dodo ?] was
only 0.2 millimeters long, tiny,
like a little glass figurine.
And then sometimes
I would say, this
is a juvenile of a Pacific
giant octopus, which
gets very, very big,
hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds of pounds.
AUDIENCE: Octopus can be
anywhere from tiny to huge.
SUSAN MIDDLETON:
Boy, can it ever.
AUDIENCE: Nudibranch
can be from--
SUSAN MIDDLETON: Yes,
nudibranchs really vary.
They're bigger in
the Pacific Northwest
than they are in
the Central Pacific.
So I don't want to hide
that information ultimately,
but it's not the first
thing I want to see.
I don't want to put a scale
reference in there for you.
I want this to be a kind of
other kind of experience.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: Thank you very much.
I was just wondering
if you would
talk a little about
your photographic setup.
What type of camera and
lenses and any unique
challenges that you've
had to overcome?
SUSAN MIDDLETON:
Yes, he's asking
about my photographic setup.
I showed you the tanks
and that kind of thing,
sort of how I deal with
photographing marine animals
in filtered water, clear water.
Which, I filter it myself and
keep the temperature right
and all of that.
The camera that I used for
this project, and for 30 years
I've been making
these portraits,
and I always used cameras and
film, usually a Hasselblad
or even sometimes
an 8 by 10 camera.
When I started this project in
2006, I switched to digital.
So I'm using a Cannon
DS Mark III for this.
All of these pictures were
have taken with that camera
and BRAUN color lighting.
Which, I got about halfway
through this project
and I love it.
So I'm hand holding
a BRAUN color strobe.
And what you can't see
in most of the pictures
that I showed you
of kind of my setup,
is that I have a
light source that's
like a light box,
that has, like,
a translucent, white front.
And it's known for being even,
edge to edge, top to bottom.
So I'm placing that
behind the aquarium, maybe
six to eight inches behind
because I don't want the light
to flare around the
subject of the photograph.
But that's creating
that white background,
and then I make sure that-- I
do a lot of testing in advance.
I make sure that that's very
close to 255 on the histogram,
so that it will come out white.
I don't want it over because
then it's unnecessary
and it'll flare.
And it'll cut the contrast.
But I also-- you probably saw
shadows in a lot of cases.
These animals are
sitting on something.
They're sitting on a
piece of white Formica,
basically, that I kind of sand.
I don't want it
to be super shiny.
Because those are real shadows.
That guy's sitting on something,
so I want that to be seen.
The only thing that I do with
Photoshop-- I never knock out
a background with Photoshop
because it looks cut out.
It just never--
I can always tell
if that's what's been done.
I will clean up backgrounds.
The crabs are notoriously messy.
So you can start out with
perfectly clean water.
And then the crab goes in,
and it's like, oh my God.
So there's just
shmutz everywhere.
So I'll retouch that out.
Sometimes I'll
give them a little,
you know, styling, if
there's too much shmutz.
But, you know, most of
these decorator crabs,
I don't want to remove
anything because that's
part of their whole character.
So I don't do a lot.
I don't do much with
Photoshop that I couldn't
have done in a dark room or in a
kind of more, what, analog way,
if that's a correct term.
Lenses-- the lenses that
I use most often here.
There is a 1X to 5X Canon
close-up lens that's marvelous.
And I used that a lot, and
then I used a macro lens a lot,
100 macro.
Those were the ones
I used the most.
Sometimes I stretched out
in other places, but yeah.
AUDIENCE: I had one
final question, I guess.
What is the impact
of water pressure
on the specimens that
you're collecting?
It seems most of them are
fairly close to the surface.
Have you done deeper?
SUSAN MIDDLETON:
Yeah, well that's
a good question, which is,
what about the water pressure
on some of these animals that
are coming from deeper places?
Most of the animals I showed you
are kind of near-shore or coral
reef creatures, but
not all of them.
Because at the French
Frigate Shoals expedition
that we went on, we
were collecting animals
from beyond 800 feet deep.
The two animals that are
new species to science
were both collected in
baited lobster traps
that were set to over 100 feet.
So I've worked with fish,
not in this project,
and with collectors
and scientists who
have popped the swim bladders
when they bring up fish
from quite deep because
the pressure is really
an issue for keeping
those animals alive.
These are spineless creatures.
And I'm not an
expert in this, but I
think they're not as
vulnerable to pressure changes
because both of those
animals were kept alive
on the ship that came up along
with many others that deep.
I can't imagine that there
aren't certain considerations,
but I don't know the details.
AUDIENCE: And you mentioned
one project of what's next.
Anything else on your
mind artistically?
SUSAN MIDDLETON: You know,
I got very interested
when I was doing-- I could
photograph marine invertebrates
for the rest of my
life and six lifetimes.
I mean, there's just so much out
there and yet to be discovered.
but what I became
really interested in
were the developmental stages
of a lot of these animals, which
you see in their
embryological stages.
So for example, that broad
based tunicat that I said
was kind of, like, relatively
closely related to chordates,
or us, you would never know.
It looks like an
orange vegetable.
But in its embryological
stages, and
in our embryological
stages, we each have
evidence of something called
a notocord and pharyngeal gill
slits.
Those are two early
evolutionary features
that defined chordates.
But you can't see
it unless you go
into that developmental
stage and look
at it, which is
through a microscope.
So I'm really interested
in kind of diving
into inner space a little
bit in a next project.
AUDIENCE: Awesome,
well, Susan, thank
you very much for
speaking with us.
SUSAN MIDDLETON: Thank you.
AUDIENCE: The book is available
wherever books are sold.
So thanks for
speaking at Google.
