By Sarah Danielzadeh
Humans naturally tend to think about media as land-based rather than underwater. But UC Santa Barbara English professor Melody Jue challenges terrestrial-based ways of knowing and reverses our perception of the world by presenting the ocean as a media environment.
UCSB English professor Melody Jue and her book, “Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater.”
Jue draws on her experience as a scuba diver to challenge people to consider the ocean itself as a media framework in her book, “Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater,” which was published in February of last year. Her research interests include ocean humanities, American literature, media theory, science fiction, and science and technology studies. She is currently teaching a science fiction short story course that includes topics such as climate fiction, simulation, and terraforming – transforming another planet to support human life.
Jue’s longtime love for science fiction helped inspire her to explore the otherworldly nature of the deep sea for her book. She found a way to meld her interests in science fiction, literature and oceanic studies by investigating how seawater transforms the ways information is stored, transmitted and perceived.
In a recent interview, Jue discussed the process of writing “Wild Blue Media” and the ways we can analyze the ocean through a new lens.
Q: How did your fascination with science fiction begin?
A: It’s a genre I’ve always been interested in. When I was growing up, I read widely and that included a lot of science fiction fantasy. I’m from California so I always grew up by the ocean and it didn’t occur to me to think about oceans in science fiction – two longstanding loves from a long time ago – until watching the BBC documentary, “Blue Planet” which is a classic narrated by David Attenborough. Attenborough explained how more people had been to outer space than to the very bottom of the ocean and that the bottom of the sea was full of these alien-like creatures. I was listening to this going, “Oh my goodness, who’s writing about this right now? Is this a viable research topic to connect the study of the oceans while thinking about the genre of science fiction literature together?”
Q: Your book, “Wild Blue Media,” encourages the reader to consider the ocean itself as a media environment. What does that mean and how does the reader begin that process?
A: The first step is to think about how the ocean is a medium. The ocean stores and transmits information depending who you are, what technology you have, or what kind of body you have. For example, whales can hear underwater and they use echolocation, so there’s been a lot of writing on how the ocean has been a medium for sound and a storage of genetic material. What I realized when writing my book is that what we mean by storage is really different in a computer or library versus in the ocean because in the ocean it is biological, so it is changing all the time.
My book says that the ocean makes us think differently about concepts that we use to talk about media in the first place. I look at inscription, storage and interface very closely throughout my book and discuss how the ocean presents very different conditions for thinking about media.
Q: How has scuba diving influenced the ways you conduct your research for your book and ask your scholarly questions?
A: Scuba diving came in handy in a couple different ways. One is that I could access different sites I wanted to write about. The last chapter in my book has to do with an underwater sculpture garden off the coast of an island in Mexico. I traveled there on a shoestring budget and went to go dive to see the sculptures. I found out some things that were very different about their presentation when you go underwater compared to photos of them online. There were all these terrestrial conventions about how these statues were presented to a human target audience that were very different from the conditions of observation in an underwater space. I started to think: How are representation and interpretation different in underwater contexts?
The other way diving came in handy was when I wrote about Jacques Cousteau’s nonfiction account of his scuba diving adventures and how he came to develop the aqua lung in the 1940s. I was able to understand what he meant because with my training, I was able to think about how the lungs in scuba diving are a really important interface, but they are one that gas moves across. I used Cousteau’s writing and my own experience to look at how a very different theory of the interface comes up in Cousteau’s writing compared with media theory, which is really obsessed with screens.
UCSB English professor Melody Jue, with an octopus while scuba diving.
Q: How has observing from underwater changed your predisposed notions of the deeper ocean?
A: I think a lot about my own sensory limitations as a human being. When you’re underwater, it’s really convenient if you can smell or hear really well. Especially off the coast of Santa Barbara where the visibility when shore diving isn’t always that great. I think our limitations should help us foster more respect for the other creatures around us. It’s easy to think of humans at the top of a species hierarchy, but we are just not made very well for certain ocean environments.
Q: Do you recall a favorite ocean experience you had while diving?
A: Right before the pandemic, I celebrated tenure by taking a trip to Fiji. This has been a longtime wish of mine to see the soft corals, which are really neat because they bloom like flowers as the current moves. We did a drift dive there that was super memorable. Everybody loves Fiji, divers can’t go wrong there.
Q: What has scuba diving and your ocean research taught you about today’s pressing issues of climate change and ocean pollution?
A: Scuba diving is a great way to participate as a witness for different changes in the ocean. In shore diving off of Santa Barbara when I first moved here in 2015, there were barely any sea stars. We had just gone through an episode of warming and there was something called “the blob” that scientists referred to as a warm water variation that moved in. Its effect on the sea stars is not entirely understood but there was something called “starfish wasting disease” and as a result, the sea star population really plummeted. Another consequence of this was that sea stars predate on purple urchins but without them, urchin populations exploded and then they ate all the kelp. So, when I was out for the first couple times, it took me awhile to realize that what I was looking at was not normal.
It’s important for divers to communicate what’s going on to the public as well. Diving is also a great way to notice other changes happening like coral bleaching. In the documentary, “Chasing Coral,” the filmmakers felt personally moved in ways that would not have been as deep if they hadn’t been filming in the ocean in person. It’s important for those who see these things in person to channel their message instead of relying on remote technologies. It’s good to keep people in the water.
Sarah Danielzadeh is a fourth year English major and Professional Writing minor. She is a Web and Social Media intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.