I had the privilege of doing a deep dive into two incredible collections at Scripps Institution of Oceanography while visiting California last week. The Marine Vertebrate Collection contains two million preserved fish specimens representing 5,600 species. The benthic invertebrates include 800,000 specimens and 7,600 species. These have been collected over decades from diverse marine habitats, including coral reefs, seamounts, hydrothermal vents, hydrocarbon seeps, the abyssal plain, and deep trenches. If you don’t mind dead creatures in glass jars, it’s awesome. The curators of both collections gave me time to wander through the… Read More