A colony of moon jellyfish grown pulse by pulse. The market sinks into the water; the jellyfish sting it, pull it in and bloom.
“The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.”— JACQUES COUSTEAU
The tank is a column of cold dark water with a reef at the bottom. In the middle hangs the mother, M-001, a moon jellyfish drawn ten times life size. Around her drift dozens of her daughters, from tiny ephyrae to full adults. Every buy is food sinking from the surface. The bigger the buy, the bigger the food: copepods, krill, a shrimp, an anchovy, a herring. At 10 SOL and above, a golden sardine.
The mother sends as many jellyfish as the food demands. They pulse toward it, sting it with their tentacles and pull it up to the mouth under the bell. Fed jellyfish grow and glow brighter. Big adults release larvae that sink and settle on the reef as polyps, and every polyp stacks up discs and releases a string of baby jellyfish, the way real moon jellies do. The market literally blooms the colony.
A buyback is an upwelling: cold water rises from below and fills the tank with plankton. A burn is marine snow: an old jellyfish stops pulsing and sinks to the floor.
This colony lives in your browser. The console feeds your copy of the tank only; the market feeds everyone's.
A jellyfish has no brain, no heart and no bones, and it has outlived almost everything else on the planet. It does not chase or think. It pulses, it drifts, it touches, and when there is enough food in the water, it blooms into millions.
Jellyfish were drifting through the oceans more than half a billion years ago, long before fish, dinosaurs or trees.
A jellyfish body is about ninety-five percent water. It has no brain, only a loose net of nerves around the bell.
Moon jellies start as tiny polyps stuck to rock. A polyp stacks itself into a pile of discs and releases them one by one as baby jellyfish called ephyrae.
One small jellyfish, Turritopsis dohrnii, can turn back into a polyp when it is old or hurt and start its life again.
When the water is warm and full of food, jellyfish can bloom in huge numbers, sometimes enough to block the cooling pipes of power stations.
The green fluorescent protein that labs use to light up cells came from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria. Its discovery won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2008.
Blue light travels deepest through sea water, which is why the deep sea looks blue and why so many sea creatures glow blue-green. CAM 01 films MD-01 under it. Press V to see only what glows.
| Jellyfish swim by pulsing the bell | REAL |
| Tentacles sting prey and pull it to the mouth | REAL |
| Polyps on the reef release baby jellyfish | REAL |
| Adults release larvae that settle as new polyps | REAL |
| Blooms when food is plentiful | REAL |
| Food size set by the size of the buy | METAPHOR |
| The mother drawn ten times life size | METAPHOR |
| Jellyfish swim toward food on an order | FICTION · THEY MOSTLY DRIFT |
| The mother gives orders | FICTION · HERE SHE DOES |
| Burned tokens sink as marine snow | FICTION |