What is It?

Dec 07, 2015 • 5:51 AM UTC

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Matthew Rossi

I'm a novelist, essayist, and a writing consultant. I work in the writing centers at Columbia and Baruch University and explore research into the overlap of maker cultures and writing. My work with the Foldscope tends to focus on finding wild creatures in urban spaces and looking at how human works are shaped by the movements of the biosphere.

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The small self-contained marine ecosystem living on my desk continues to thrive. It currently occupies two tanks–one for the nudibranch eggs (and subsequent larvae…more on that in a few days) and one for everyone else. The reasoning for keeping larvae and all other separate is simple: nudibranchs have a reputation as marine aquarium killers, and I worry a bloom of them will offset the balance of the ecosystem too much. As it stands, the little gelato jar in which my subjects live seems stable and passes the sniff test, at least (which is to say, it smells roughly of good oysters when I take a whiff).
In addition to this, with each new observation, I find new creatures to admire and wonder about. This is true of both tanks, actually. Recently I noticed an interesting phenomenon. When I shone a side light through the water, I observed swarms of microorganisms floating to the surface around central substrates, like dandelion puffs. Under the microscope, they revealed this:

I’m not sure what the substrate is–my guess was eggs of some kind–but the thing that interested me most what the larger creature walking around in the shot. Here’s a longer shot of another one:

As the file name indicates, I think this is a barnacle cyprid. This is my best guess based on the searches I’ve done so far for marine plankton. A cyprid or a rotifer, but the fact that it has clearly defined back legs, seems to be crawling rather than swimming most of the time, makes me think crustacean over animalcule.
If it is a barnacle, this is very exciting, since I’ll soon have barnacles growing in my water (a gelato jar with barnacles in it would be the most Brooklyn thing ever). If it isn’t a barnacle (if they aren’t barnacles, I mean), then I have no clue what they are. And this uncertainty is the most exciting thing I can think of. It happens on a pretty regular basis. Stumbling on a creature I’ve never seen, never conceived of seeing before. Usually when I’m looking for something familiar. “What are you?” I find myself wondering all the time. It happened again while looking at nudibranch eggs:

I guessed initially that this was a nudibranch. Though now that I have seen signs of other nudibranch larvae, I’m not so sure.
Imagine if we were to stop stumbling on new things. Yet the longer I watch, the more it seems the well just goes deeper. This is as good a reason to keep exploring as any.