The Sea Slug Forum

The Web has been wildly overhyped, unfairly knocked and blatantly misunderstood since the day it went from Planet of the Geeks to The Next Big Thing. Crotchety pundits trying to sound sweepingly insightful on deadline and idiot businessmen with difficulty comprehending anything beyond next month's bottom line have flubbed broad statements about the medium so many times that it's become clear that the popular press (business or otherwise) is probably the last place to go for a well-informed discussion of the Web's prospects.

Though the Web offers a host of different ways to communicate, and an entirely new way to display and retail merchandise, it seems to fall down as a global solution to anything. Businesses that plunged hip-deep into Web content or online wholesaling with no print catalogs or retail storefronts got burned, and bad.

But quasi-official assessors of the Web's possibilities sometimes miss what really makes the Web great: small groups of people, intensely connecting with one another in central online gathering places, and having impassioned discussions on topics of shared interest.

Such as sea slugs.

Once upon a time, every major university had a single guy (or woman, but back in the day it was typically a guy) who really knew his sea slugs. He'd occasionally send letters (or later, make phone calls) to other sea slug experts. He'd go to the bi-annual Things That Live Underwater Symposium in Boca Raton, and sit at the sea-slug table. And he'd meet the public whenever the aquarium needed a local academic to talk about their new exhibit of elysia ornata.

Which wasn't all that often.

But with the Web, the small world of sea slugologists finally has an international water cooler. The sea slug forum provides all those concerned with things related to sea slugs a place to go, and chat, and feel at home. There's now a central clearing place for sea-slug information, where you can ask Japanese biologists about what they're working on, where you can talk to scientists working in Carribbean what they're up to, and where you gaze upon the collected wealth of knowledge about all things nudibranchial.

Perhaps most excitingly, laymen can go and browse through the site, gazing at gorgeous photos of our squidgy little friends and squinting at pages of esoteric messages discussing the finer points of sea slug biology. Zingers like this get tossed back in forth in the various forums:

Thanks very much for the photo. I never expected it to have a black animal. Most shelled opisthobranchs I know of are a translucent white in colour. Would it be too outlandish to suggest that the black animal and blackish shell help the animal to absorb any heat more efficiently?

The site is cleanly organized, has big, attractive, colorful photos of the slugs in question and is effectively an enormous cluster of forums organized by species. If you're only interested in the hyper-controversial thuridilla carlsoni, you can easily get your fix, as can someone who wants to read about the much more indie-rock Bullina sp. 1, a slug species that is strictly for the hardcore.

How many budding aquatic biologists will get their start staring at the gyrating nudibranchs found at The Sea Slug Forum? How many research papers and field expeditions will spring forth from impassioned conversations on the site's many forums? How much further will a little corner of science advance mankind's knowledge as a result? And how many visitors will be impressed by stumbling upon a little shrine to a most underappreciated (but deserving) form of life? "Lots," seems like a plausible answer.

To those who question the real value of the Web: Sea slugs. Now, please fall into a respectful silence, and don't speak again until you understand why you were wrong.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)