Nov 5, 2007, 11:50 GMT
Sydney - When the creatures are warm and furry and have features like ours, it's easy to generate the public's interest in the natural world.
But holding people's attention when the subjects are cold, wet, a bit slimy and often very hard to see, is much more of a challenge.
Australian marine biologist Sheree Marris has picked on an aspect of behaviour in the underwater world that keeps an audience switched on: sex.
'Think of the kinkiest thing you can image and they are doing it down there,' the managing director of Visions of Blue educational consultants said. 'Compared to sea creatures, we're just so boring.'
Marris, whose latest book is called KamaSEAtra: Secrets of Sex in the Sea, uses tales of underwater romance to whip up interest in a neglected field of study.
'It's a case of out of sight, out of mind,' Melbourne-based Marris said. 'To help people engage with the marine environment, I make it interesting and sexy.'
Even seahorses, reputed to be monogamous, are only relatively so. 'They are the exception that proves the rule, but in fact they are promiscuous,' she said.
The female deep sea angler fish makes no pretence of faithfulness. She lets loose a perfume to attract a mate, who literally attaches himself to her for the rest of his life.
'He becomes fused to her and basically becomes a blob of testicles on her skin,' the 28-year-old Deakin University graduate said. One female she found had 11 males stuck to her, one right between her eyes.
Such seemingly bizarre behaviour is a response to a challenging environment in which potential partners do not come along too often and wanton lust can be deadly.
'We just go to a singles bar or go on an internet dating site, and we don't have to worry about our children being eaten. There aren't the threat of predators,' she said.
To attract mates, some harness luminescent bacteria. The male octopus is particularly clever, simultaneously sending out signals to attract females and repel males.
'While the male is delivering sperm packages to the female, one side of his body is flashing all these amazing colours to the female saying 'look at me, look how cool I am' while the other side of him looks like a rock so other males won't know what's going on.'
Some cuttlefish can disguise their appearance to sneak past another male and have sex behind their rival's back.
'It's all about evolution, about the survival of the fittest, of getting to breed with the biggest and best and strongest,' she said, noting that if the sea creatures took the same attitude to sex as we do, lots of species would quickly die out.
Innovation and creativity is the name of the game. 'It's all just so weird - detachable penises, creatures with both male and female sex organs, the men incubating the eggs.'
The barnacle is the one with the amazing penis extension. It's stuck to a rock and so sends its member out roaming the rockpools to find a mate.
Marris delights in being a marine biologist, noting that there's lots left in the underwater world yet to discover whereas on dry land everything has pretty much been studied.
'I'm learning things every day. Each time I go out diving, I see new things.'
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