Botanical Whales
Adventures in the Tortugas reveal that seagrass fields need saving too
By Susan Milius
OK, OK, a plant can’t really look a person in the eye and share its thoughts. But after a strange couple of days, I’m almost ready to commune with vegetable matter. A string of wet, pinkie-tip–sized green leaves sits on a paper plate in front of me, and I begin to think that this little sprig and I are both wondering, “You? What in the world are you doing here?”
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I’m a terrestrial vertebrate rocking slightly from side to side on a research ship more than 100 kilometers west of the tip of Florida, near the Tortugas Ecological Reserve. I’m tagging along with marine biologists on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s research vessel the Nancy Foster. Though my first three days with nothing but water in all directions have been thrilling, I haven’t shaken some bone-deep sense that I don’t belong here and that air-breathing land creatures visit the seas on sufferance.