New Goby Footage & Humor in Scicomm

I had some free time, and to my pleasure I noticed that I am still in the Philippines, close to some top muck diving sites, in Dauin and Zamboanguita, on Negros. So I filmed some pretty small fishes, mostly gobies. It’s amazing what footage you can get if you swim calmly and keep your eyes open. Conditions are amazing these days, lots of critters around, calm seas and good visibility – not that the latter maters for macro video and photography.

Then, I had that nice footage sitting on my hard drive. What to do with it? I always like to educate the interested payman and laywoman, who are among my favorite people in the world, about biology. The problem only is: gobies are not the most awe-inspiring fishes to the non-expert. Yes, they have an amazing number of species as a family, interesting symbiotic behavior, ect, ect, but they are no Great White Sharks. No one will experience an adrenaline rush when viewing a video of a goby coming right at you. There will be no “wow!” and “Aargh!” jelled out in front of screens when a goby swims, or crawls, by. So what to do?

What I have been trying for a while is to bring humor into science communication, and popular science (is there a difference or are these synonyms?). There are a few upside to this. Firstly, I am having fun myself making videos with some attempted humor in it. That’s a big deal. Then, it goes a bit against the Zeitgeist. These are the times of moralizing finger wagging. I am not impressed with this cultural trend – I believe when adults talk to each other, they need to have a sense or irony and humor in their mental arsenals. I try to communicate fish science with this notion in mind.

Having a humorous approach to explaining marine biology also will catch eyes I wouldn’t otherwise have caught; This is partially due to the effect of humor as such, partially due to its relative rarity in the world of science communication in this day&age. Exhibit number one: pro wrestling meets gobies:

One More

Exhibit number two: only two funny men, underwater? No! An explanation of sophisticated physics, and how it influences fish feeding, when the fish are still small.

Images

Also, please don’t miss my new underwater shots on Flickr. I have been uploading underwater footage since 2009 to this fine photo site, and have by now 7761 photos on there – mostly underwater shots, from Japan, Australia, Micronesia and the Philippines. Most of my material is underwater, almost all of it nature and landscape photography. The shots are all CC, and well indexed/tagged, some of the images are quite creative I believe. Some are funny!

This goby is a new entry over there:

Best Fishes,

Klaus