As far as pets in science fiction are concerned, fish are pretty low on the popularity list. They don't make very good companions when exploring a newly-discovered planet or help keep you space ship rat free. However, there are a few science fictional characters that do keep an aquarium. Not only are those pet fish educational and entertaining, they tell us something about the personality and interests of their owners.

So here are a few of my favorite science fictional pet fish:

Arthur Dent's Babel Fish

One of the biggest problems in a universe full of intelligent beings is communication. In the Star Trek universe, the solution is a universal translator. In the universe of Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy the solution is much wetter, as Arthur Dent finds out when his friend Ford Prefect: rescues him from the destruction of earth and shoves a Babel Fish into his ear:

Lift up one arm, and bend your elbow. Reach with your fingers to a point on your back, between your shoulder-blades. Scratch. Not only will that work wonders for any annoying tingle that you might have been feeling, but you have just demonstrated your superior flexibility to an elbow crab.

One of our favorite marine conservation bloggers, Jennifer Jacquet of Guilty Planet at Scienceblogs, recently took a Panama vacation, which wasn't quite so Panama-riffic (ok, bad play on words, but you get the idea.) Still, it was well worth.  Read on to find out just how much.

I am traveling in Panama (have been for the last couple weeks, hence the sparse blogposts) as a post-dissertation vacation.

I started at Bocas del Toro, which several friends of mine recommended. Despite being somewhat hard to get to, Bocas is overrun with tourism and is thus overrun with overbearing hoteliers and is overpriced (in addition, both bank machines in town went the way of Zimbabwe and were short on cash.) The Caribbean's glory days seem over to me: the coral reefs were part beautiful, part wrecked. There were no big fish to be seen. It might not be a bad idea to pour sugar on Bocas and allow the ants to have their way.

Okutsu works on salmonids, a group of fish that includes salmon and trout. Many members of this tasty clan have suffered greatly from over-fishing in the last few decades, and their populations are dwindling their way to extinction.

If stocks fall below a critical level, they may need a jump-start. One strategy is to freeze some eggs to be fertilised artificially, in the way that many human eggs are in fertility clinics. But it's much harder for fish eggs - they are large and have lots of fat, which makes them difficult to freeze effectively.

In 1995 I moved to Boston, MA to study - it had been a very long time since my family had been diving - my parents were still living in Bolivia (one of the two landlocked countries in South America).  The winters were absolutely brutal, and all I could do was dream of the warm Caribbean / Atlantic Oceans. 

My roommate at the time was Justin Hull - he was a very big factor in getting my dad and I back to the Bahamas,  initially to do some spearfishing (Justin, we still talk about you to this day about that - thank you).  Justin is originally from Massachusetts but grew up in South Florida. His father was a yacht broker and ocean man - he spent many years sailing the Bahamas and knows the area very well.  One winter while we were talking about fishing, Justin mentioned that in the Abacos one could rent houses, boats, and still catch an abundance of fish...he also said there were still a lot of sharks (little did we know).

In the summer of 1997 my old man, Justin and I went to Green Turtle Cay for some serious spearfishing.  As a side thought, my father brought his trusted Nikonos V, probably thinking he would take some photos of the speared fish.  What we thought was going to be a laid back trip really became the turning point for my father's passions - it was now an obsession.

He's swum with dolphins, sharks, manta rays, and sea turtles--and that's only the least bit of what makes Carribbean-born author Tobias Buckell so exciting!! Born in Grenada, Tobias grew up in a boat by the sea where he got a first-hand account of marine life, marine biology, the windswept, weather beaten water, and life amidst the ocean.  

So it's no surprise that Tobias made his career in writing about science fiction and the future.  Perhaps that it's fiction is a little difficult to comprehend but as Tobias puts it in the interview below, "The topics I write about are grounded in the history of the area." He continues, My interest in futurism comes from growing up in a more sparse environment and reading tales of the future."

With soon-to-be science fiction classics like Crystal Rain, Raggamuffin, and Sly Mongoose under his belt, a career as a professional blogger (among other things, he writes for the Futurismic, a site for people interested in the future and the effects of science and technology on the present) and a new novel, Arctic Rising, coming soon, looks like we've come to expect great things from Tobias and will continue to do so.

Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale - long deep breaths.  As I float on the surface and look down I start thinking about how light and relaxed my body feels.  I take a last deep breath, pack my lungs, release the snorkel from my mouth, close my eyes, forget the world above me,  and begin my descent.  You may be thinking this is a story about performance freediving or reaching incredible depths - but it is not.  Below me is a small Nassau Grouper at about 30ft waiting for me to come back down and give me a chin tickle, cheek rub. 

This is a story about how I got into freediving and interacting with sharks.  I do not hold any records - either spear-fishing, static, dynamic or any other freediving disciplines.   What I do love is being in the Ocean and interacting with animals - from small to large.