it's 11:11, do you know what plankton are?
you might be surprised to learn the truth ...
Hello my beloved squidstack readers! I hope this newsletter can bring some levity and playful chaos into your leap day. Cephalopods, you (my friends), and oikos yogurt are all that is keeping my mind, body, and spirit semi-functional. THANK YOU. Keep sending me your reactions, your follow up resources, your facts, etc. Share the squidstack with your ailing loved ones. Squid Love For All!
Plankton! You may know plankton from spongebob, a tiny, diabolical, and charming villain. But do you actually know what plankton is? Most people (survey size: 1), do not!
I’m here to share some possibly earth shattering news with you… “plankton” is a loose category of life! Not a specific animal! There are many types of plankton! Plankton from spongebob is a copepod, a specific kind of extremely common zooplankton.
Many marine creatures are plankton as larva, then grow into larger organisms later on, including many SQUID other cephalopods!
So, what is the deal with plankton? Broadly, plankton are characterized as marine drifters.* Unable to fight a current, planktonic organisms literally go with the flow. (Organisms that can move through the water on their own, like adult squid or fish, are “nektonic.” Organisms that live on the seafloor are “benthic.”)
Plankton are divided into large and imperfect categories based on their size and the role they play in their ecosystems. Phytoplankton are primary producers, forming the basis of the marine food web. These protists and bacteria are microscopic, and they photosynthesize, ie. use sunlight (photons) to turn carbon dioxide into organic compounds.
Zooplankton are mostly primary consumers (herbivores)! They cannot produce their own energy, so they must eat other organisms to survive, like phytoplankton. They are typically visible to the naked eye! Marine invertebrate larva are mostly zooplankton (see graphic above). They are the coolest to a layperson such as myself.
There are also planktonic fungi, bacteria, and viruses. Some plankton are autotrophic AND heterotrophic—they can phytosynthesize when there is light available and then switch to eating other plankton in dark and lean times. If I’ve learned anything from this squid stack, it’s that there is a lot of nuance, variation, and exception in planktonic categorization. If you have one takeaway, remember, plankton is not a specific animal, it is a huge category of ecologically important life!
**Contrary to the definition of plankton as impotent marine drifters, many plankton actually move themselves independently! They do diel vertical migration (DVM)! DVM is the phenomenon of organisms moving up and down the water column based on time of day. Commonly, diel vertical migrators descend to deeper waters at dawn to avoid predators and then ascend at dusk to feed near the surface. Many kinds of plankton do this, but so do non-planktonic organisms, like the fully grown humboldt squid.
recs
I must plug Minnesota Strike, our own ”women and nonbinary” pro ultimate team! I am new on the team! I am excited to be here! And finally, my loved ones can come watch me play the sport I’ve spent countless hours practicing and playing. In a rare earnest squidstack moment, Ultimate is something I feel pure joy and presence doing! It is the linchpin of my mental health (uh oh?), and while I do hold a lot of tension around it (so many white libs), I feel so lucky to have it in my life. It would mean a lot to me if you came to a game! I actually do love attention, and I would love to show off for you 😉.
Collage class! Wow another actionable recommendation! Community member (but non-squidstack subscriber) Nell is offering another collage class!! I’m in their winter session now, and it has been an absolute delight. I look forward to this time every week to be creative in a chill environment. I have learned so much about color! I’m tempted to sign up again, but take space, make space, you know?
Ichiban Edina is a newish all you can eat sushi place!! At $44.95, it is $12ish more expensive than kyoto AYCE sushi on lyndale. But it is higher quality and better for sure. The sashimi is cut thick, and it tastes fresher. They also have premium appetizers like deep fried oysters and softshell crab on their menu. For you gluten free readers out there, there is basically nothing gluten free except the actual fish. I didn’t try any rolls when I was there, so if you go, please try some rolls and let me know! Or better yet, invite me!
More opportunities to support non-cismen sports! Go see a Professional Women’s Hockey League game! I had a great time with the friends I went with and all of my friends who also happened to be there. If you do go, get the fries! By far the best food we ordered. The mini donuts did hit the spot for me—pillowy with good flavor—but they could have been crispier. The cheese curds, like most stadium curds, were bad. Why do I insist on getting them every time!
media
One piece! All I do is watch one piece! It’s an extended adventure series that follows a rag tag bunch of dream-chasing, goofy, and extremely strong pirates as they hunt for fabled treasure, the “one piece.” Each adventure arc so far has been creative, engaging, and fun! Sometimes they are fighting monsters, sometimes they are overthrowing warlords of the sea, sometimes they are finding islands in the sky!
After watching 230 episodes of the anime, I have decided that the anime is way better than the live action. Though I did still like the live action version, and it was also my gateway to the anime. I think live action remakes of anime just miss the magic that only animation can bring. I had the misfortune of watching 30 minutes of the Avatar the Last Airbender live action tv show last week, and wow I felt physically ill watching! It was horrific.
If you are considering watching One Piece, two caveats: there is anti-Blackness in the anime and the live action—so far mostly in the character Usopp, the Fish Men, and a very cringey afro-based plot point around episode 220. (And of course possibly more places that I missed!) There are also SO many amazing, incredible queer-coded villains. But as a friend kindly explained to me, that’s actually homophobic…their queerness isn’t meant to be cool and inspiring (as I took it), but instead it is part of their wrongness and villainy. Damn that sucks.
And lastly, I watched the new Mean Girls movie. All I will say is that Auliʻi Cravalho as Janice Ian/'Imi'ike was amazing, Renee Rapp as Regina George was very hot (though overall a flatter and less developed character), and seeing Tina Fey on screen was like seeing a ghost. In the words of the squid reader who recommended this movie to me, “if you loved the original mean girls, it’s worth a watch!”
sources links etc
plankton primers: https://www.whoi.edu/know-your-ocean/ocean-topics/ocean-life/jellyfish-other-zooplankton/plankton-by-any-other-name/ + https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/plankton.html
diel vertical migration and the humboldt squid: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0079661110000388?via%3Dihub
E. Shea, 1995, “The Early Life Histories of Three Families of Cephalopods (Order Teuthoidea) and an Examination of the Concept of a Paralarva,” https://scholarworks.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2820&context=etd “
https://payload.cargocollective.com/1/10/347884/5085588/12-5_squid_o.jpg squid lifecycle graphic
“southern dumpling squid (Euprymna tasmanica)” —it exists!
larval cephalopod haul from 1945: https://journals.australian.museum/allan-1945-rec-aust-mus-216-317350/
Yay!
Who knew that there were so many levels to plankton?!?!