Ellen Prager loves to tell stories about kinky sex, drugs, cannibalism and slime.
Her lectures slide shows often come with a warning: “Viewer discretion advised. Content includes undersea animal nudity and explicit reproduction language.”
The Miami-based marine scientist gushes while talking about the hagfish that can produce seven buckets worth of slime in minutes and the vampire squid that shoots beads of glowing slime from its arm.
Then there’s the blanket octopus that self amputates an arm in order to provide sperm to a female.
“I call it the baby-making arm,” Prager said. “The male dies and becomes a kind of martyr. The female ends up with multiple male arms. I guess you can say she swims around.”
She’s spent the past 30 years studying the biodiversity of the ocean and making marine research engaging and understandable to the public.
“I have fun with science, but work hard not to lose my credibility,” said Prager, whose long list of credentials include a stint as chief scientist of the Aquarius Reef Base, the world’s only underwater laboratory, located a few miles offshore of Key Largo.
Instead of diving into the ocean, Prager recently dove into the dusty shelves of the marine science library at the University of Miami to come up with material for her new book: “Sex, Drugs, and Sea Slime: The Ocean’s Oddest Creatures and Why They Matter.”
“The title explains a lot about Ellen and her ability to communicate,” said Billy Causey, the Southeast Regional Director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s Marine Sanctuaries Program.
Who knew the Maine lobster, once considered the cockroach of the sea and junk food by America’s earliest settlers, is recognized by scientists “for the power of their pee?”
“When a female Maine lobster approaches a shelter, hot for some action, she not only sniff’s for male pee, she lets loose a stream of her own,” Prager writes. “Her urine can render a once brutish male docile and even touchy, feely.”
It’s the lobsters’ version of “Love Potion No. 9.”
Renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle said in the book’s jacket: “If you read only one book about the ocean, read this one.”
Prager got the idea for this book after visiting a friend in Maine who confided she had a new phobia of hagfish, an eel-like creature that eat the dead or dying and swim into open orifices.
“It was like a light bulb went off: wacky stories about marine creatures and how they are connected to what the average person might care about: health, biomedical research, food, the economy,” Prager said.
But upon delving into marine research, some studies dating to the 1950s, Prager came across three fascinating themes: sea creatures produce sea slime for a wide range of uses; marine life has numerous strange sex strategies; and so much biomedical research is being conducted from sea compounds.
Take the cone snail, whose toxin already has led to the development of the pharmaceutical Prialt, a powerful pain killer.
“Scientists think of all animals in the world, the cone snail has the most potential in biomedical research and pharmaceuticals,” Prager said.
Then there’s the sea slug, which has to worry about cannabalism while having sex.
And the queen conch, a large snail with a pink shell, which must have a great sex life.
Biologist Al Stoner told her: “There’s a real advantage to studying the reproductive biology of an organism that is big, slow, mates for hours on end, and has a penis half its total body length.”
Prager said the problem is when the verge (scientific name for the male reproductive organ) is outside the shell, crabs and eels like to munch on it.
The good news — the snail can grow another.
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