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Whalesharks (Fiction/Fact)

Whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) are the largest shark, and indeed largest of any fishes alive today. These gentle marine giants roam the oceans around the globe, generally alone. They only feed on plankton. In the Norwegian explorer, Thor Theyerdal's account of his journey by raft across the Pacific Ocean from South America to the Polynesian islands in 1947, the crew is visited by one of these curious and benign creatures: "In reality the whale shark went on encircling us for barely an hour, but to us the visit seemed to last a whole day. At last it became too exciting for Erik, who was standing at a corner of the raft with an eight-foot hand harpoon, and, encouraged by ill-considered shouts, he raised the harpoon above his head. As the whale shark came gliding slowly toward him and its broad head moved right under the corner of the raft, Erik thrust the harpoon with all his giant strength down between his legs and deep into the whale shark’s gristly head. It was a second or two before the giant understood properly what was happening. Then in a flash the placid half-wit was transformed into a mountain of steel muscles. We heard a swishing noise as the harpoon line rushed over the edge of the raft and saw a cascade of water as the giant stood on its head and plunged down into the depths. The three men who were standing nearest were flung about the place, head over heels, and two of them were flayed and burned by the line as it rushed through the air. The thick line, strong enough to hold a boat, was caught up on the side of the raft but snapped at once like a piece of twine, and a few seconds later a broken-off harpoon shaft came up to the surface two hundred yards away" .
A label in the Natural History Museum

A label in the Natural History Museum accompanying a discovery made by Mary Anning.
Your inner fish

"Our hands resemble fossil fins; our heads are organised like those of long extinct jawless fish and major parts of our genomes still look and function like those worms and bacteria" (Shubin 2008). During the summer of his second year of study, paleontologist and evolutionary biologist, Neil Shubin, discovered a particular fossil fish in the Arctic, naming it the Tiktaalik. In Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body (2009) he explored the connections in our human anatomy with those fishes that ventured onto land over 375 million years ago, based on the information gathered from studying the Tiktaalik.
Of fish and men

The evolution of jaw muscles from fish to men.
Diving the Tacoma Narrows Bridge

"All that debris still remains under the bridge for the most part, and it has become a dive site. It is a very difficult dive site to get to because of the swiftly moving water and the very short period of slack time. Nature in this area has just a tremendous ability to take over. You have a man-made structure like the Tacoma Narrow Bridge that collapsed into the water. Very quickly, the ocean took it over and made it part of the habitat". Extract from the voiceover of trailer for 700 Feet Down (a documentary about the Tacoma Narrows Bridge told through witnesses of the bridge’s 1940 demise as well as intrepid divers exploring a reef of wreckage, ultimately reflecting on how history influences the present)
Pier 59

A monumental installation piece recreating the ocean liner Titanic as a floating deck plan (in its original size – 882 feet long; 92 feet wide), projected in light onto the surface of the Hudson River at Pier 59 (due west of West 18th Street), the ship's intended destination in 1912.
Eugen Ransonnet-Villez

"Measuring three feet high by two and half wide and deep, this submersible, of sheet iron and inch-thick glass, had the user's legs sticking out of the bottom so that he could propel himself along the seabed at a depth of five meters or so. It was weighed down by cannonballs, and with air pumped in, the diving bell allowed him to descend for sessions of up to three hours" (The Public Domain Review 2021).
Lithograph of underwater scene

Lithograph of underwater scene by Eugen Ransonnet-Villez, from colour pencil drawings made by the artist while submerged in his diving bell, from his 'Sketches of the Inhabitants, Animal Life and Vegetation in the Lowlands and High Mountains of Ceylon' (1867)
Melchior & Cousteau

In 1963 Simone Melchior became the world's first female aquanaut by living in Starfish House, an underwater habitat, for the final four days of the Conshelf II project. Although never visible in the 'Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau' series, Cousteau's wife and business partner played a key role in the operation at sea. She was the acting mother, healer, nurse and psychiatrist to the all-male crew for 40 years. Cousteau describes her as being "happiest out of camera range, in the crow’s nest of the Calypso (...), scanning the sea for whales". Her father, Henri Melchior, was director of Air Liquide (France’s main producer of industrial gases at the time) and funded the invention of the aqua lung and the scuba diving apparatus we know today.
"I wonder if it remembers me..."

In Wes Anderson’s 2004 film, 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou', Bill Murray plays the part of eccentric oceanographer, Steve Zissou. Zissou is both a parody of and homage to Jacques-Yves Cousteau, to whom the film is dedicated. The characters were inspired by The Great Gatsby and The Magnificent Ambersons, whilst the plot has been compared to Moby Dick. While filming a documentary, Steve’s partner Esteban du Plantier is eaten by a creature Zissou describes as a “Jaguar shark.” For his next project, Zissou orchestrates documenting the shark’s destruction.
The Jaguar Shark

In Wes Anderson’s 2004 film, 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou', Bill Murray plays the part of eccentric oceanographer, Steve Zissou. Zissou is both a parody of and homage to Jacques-Yves Cousteau, to whom the film is dedicated. The characters were inspired by The Great Gatsby and The Magnificent Ambersons, whilst the plot has been compared to Moby Dick. While filming a documentary, Steve’s partner and close friend, Esteban du Plantier, is eaten by a creature Zissou describes as a “Jaguar shark.” For his next project, Zissou orchestrates documenting the shark’s destruction.
"I've decided to stop pitying myself"

“Her purse is half open, and I see a hotel room key, a metro ticket, and a hundred-franc note folded in four, like objects brought back by a space probe sent to earth to study how earthlings live, travel, and trade with one another. The sight leaves me pensive and confused. Does the cosmos contain keys for opening up my diving bell? A subway line with no terminus? A currency strong enough to buy my freedom back? We must keep looking. I'll be off now". An extract from Jean-Dominique Bauby's 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly', the memoir which he dictated after suffering a stroke in 1995. The stroke rendered him mute and almost completely paralyzed, except for the movement of his left eyelid. Bauby dictated his memoir through blinking as his speech therapist listed the letters of the alphabet. When his doctor told him his prognosis, he mentioned that in the past , he would have simply died from this type of stroke, but that improved resuscitation techniques had now prolonged and refined the agony of this condition: "You survive, but you survive with what is so aptly known as 'locked-in syndrome'”.