Good evening Class,

Did anybody else get goosebumps reading the introduction to The Ocean Reader? Because those measurements made a shiver run down my spine.

It wasn’t until very recently that I’ve been able to better accurately visualize distances and lengths mentally – because of this newfound ability, I had to do double take after double take when reading the introduction to The Ocean Reader. I do all of my mental measurements in yards because its easy for me to visualize the length of a football field in my head than a kilometer. So if one kilometer is 1,093, and some change, yards long – or a little less than 11 football fields – then that means the Mariana Trench is about 27,887 football fields deep… please, somebody tell me I’m not the only one freaked out by that idea.

To think that a majority of the Earth’s crust is underwater is baffling. This means a majority of OUR planet is not easily accessible by any means. I’m personally conflicted by this. I see myself as a part of Earth – I believe that just because I can ask questions about how the world operates and what life means doesn’t necessarily mean I’m entitled an explanation. I do not want to meddle with the natural order of the planet just to scratch any philosophical itch I may conjure up. I WAS content with living in a world full of mystery and I DO enjoy looking at the sky and day dreaming about the universe and its plethora of mysteries. But seeing just how much of the world is underwater (and really being able to visualize it) has made me a little more curious than I was before. The ocean is truly another world existing within our own, and this realization is becoming more and more apparent to me the more we read in this course.

EDIT: I think I might have gotten my calculations wrong. My bad, everyone.