Edinburgh, Scotland
Rule Britannia, Britannia Rules the Waves! And beautiful, dramatic and changeable waves they are! The last Queen before the current one, Victoria, went by the full title of Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and Empress of India, a lengthy moniker indicative, as much as anything, of the scope of the British Empire and it’s dominance of the world’s seas. Strange, then, that Victoria’s titles failed to include Ruler of the Waves or even Czarina of the Kelp Forests and Fishes. In fact, throughout human history the sea has been seen not so much as a place in its own right, but as a highway from place to place and as a black box from which some useful things could be pulled and into which other things could conveniently disappear.
One wonders if Victoria ever considered the nature of the realm over which her navies sailed. Did the islanders of St. Kilda ever let their imaginations roam into the depths of the crashing seas that surrounded their home and fed the seabirds that fed them? We are creatures of the land and the air and it is all too easy to see the oceans as a surface, forgetting or ignoring the wonderful three-dimensional world that is their true nature.
Dive into the temperate waters of the British Isles, as I do in my enviable role as Undersea Specialist on the National Geographic Explorer, and you will discover a beautiful fairyland forest of kelp, full of strange crustaceans, fish in glittering finery and jewel-like animals with no counterpart on land. This is a part of Britain; to me it seems an inescapable continuation of the dramatic landscapes, craggy cliffs, lonely islands and sandy beaches that ring this island nation. If you haven’t seen the kelp forest, if you haven’t marveled at the brilliant colors of a cuckoo wrasse, if you haven’t felt the eerie serenity of a great battleship after a century beneath the waves, you really don’t know some of the greatest treasures of the sceptered isle. Join us and it will be my great pleasure to show you my side, the wet and wonderful side, of the British Isles.
Rule Britannia, Britannia Rules the Waves! And beautiful, dramatic and changeable waves they are! The last Queen before the current one, Victoria, went by the full title of Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and Empress of India, a lengthy moniker indicative, as much as anything, of the scope of the British Empire and it’s dominance of the world’s seas. Strange, then, that Victoria’s titles failed to include Ruler of the Waves or even Czarina of the Kelp Forests and Fishes. In fact, throughout human history the sea has been seen not so much as a place in its own right, but as a highway from place to place and as a black box from which some useful things could be pulled and into which other things could conveniently disappear.
One wonders if Victoria ever considered the nature of the realm over which her navies sailed. Did the islanders of St. Kilda ever let their imaginations roam into the depths of the crashing seas that surrounded their home and fed the seabirds that fed them? We are creatures of the land and the air and it is all too easy to see the oceans as a surface, forgetting or ignoring the wonderful three-dimensional world that is their true nature.
Dive into the temperate waters of the British Isles, as I do in my enviable role as Undersea Specialist on the National Geographic Explorer, and you will discover a beautiful fairyland forest of kelp, full of strange crustaceans, fish in glittering finery and jewel-like animals with no counterpart on land. This is a part of Britain; to me it seems an inescapable continuation of the dramatic landscapes, craggy cliffs, lonely islands and sandy beaches that ring this island nation. If you haven’t seen the kelp forest, if you haven’t marveled at the brilliant colors of a cuckoo wrasse, if you haven’t felt the eerie serenity of a great battleship after a century beneath the waves, you really don’t know some of the greatest treasures of the sceptered isle. Join us and it will be my great pleasure to show you my side, the wet and wonderful side, of the British Isles.
