The Ocean Is Gay

On Sabrina Imbler's 'How Far the Light Reaches'

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The title of Sabrina Imbler’s science memoir, How Far the Light Reaches, refers to the “vertical zones” of the ocean, which are delineated based on how far down the sunlight penetrates. The further you go down, the more bizarre the living organisms become. It’s hard to relate to a creature when it doesn’t have eyes, a mouth, or a set of cutesy characteristics we associate with animals with human-like traits. Dredging up all sorts of critters from the ocean, Imbler connects them to something personal in their own life – a set of individual experiences attached to sea creatures with their own histories and life patterns. 

As a queer, mixed-race person, Imbler’s life story and perspective is different from that of the archetypical straight, white science writer. How Far The Light Reaches is a book about queer science but not in a “look at how many animals have same-sex relationships” kind of way. Those gay penguins are adorable, but Imbler has created something much more delicate: a personal history refined and refracted through the lens of the ocean’s most magical creatures. 

Imbler starts with a story about being banned from Petco as a young teenager. At the time, they were passionate about the plight of goldfish and tried to dissuade potential customers from buying the poor creatures. Later, they learned about feral goldfish, which can grow as large as a pineapple and live up to twenty years when released into the wild. Unfortunately, guilty fish owners have created a bit of an ecological quandary, as these wild goldfish completely take over whatever river or pond they are deposited into and are impossible to get rid of. Though environmentally damaging, Imbler feels for the hungry survivors. After all, wild goldfish are rich with metaphor: how might we all grow when freed from a cage or a tank? 

Like any good science writer hoping to make their work accessible, Imbler personifies these creatures while still maintaining the facts. On their own, the facts are rather stunning. For example, Imbler chronicles the story of an octopus off the coast of California who didn’t eat for a record four and a half years while sheltering her babies. Such a story is given new resonance when Imbler shares with us the story of their relationship with disordered eating, which stems from their own mother’s troubling relationship with food. Or, consider the Chinese sturgeon, a critically endangered species that was once abundant. These sturgeon used to roam freely in the same rivers where Imbler’s grandmother spent many starving months fleeing from war. 

Whales are some of the most beloved creatures in the ocean, and Imbler treats them with appropriate seriousness. Recalling Rebecca Giggs’ excellent book Fathoms: The World in the Whale, they take us through the history of humankind’s relationship with the whale, from (over)whaling to scientific study. Imbler outlines the process of whale necropsy – like an autopsy but for animals – which involves describing everything you can see, feel, and smell in order to determine a cause of death. They use the term to describe a series of failed (queer) relationships, searching for a reason for their demise. 

They recount the lifecycle of these animals, such as a whale fall – when a whale dies and its body falls to the bottom of the ocean, providing substance for other creatures along the way – and the orca in the Puget Sound who carried her dead baby on her snout for more than 1,000 miles. These are evocative images on their own, and they don’t need much massaging to be impactful. But Imbler has a particular talent for describing scientific facts with emotion. Even more so than their many personal stories, these feeling-forward descriptions are the best moments in the book. 

Several years ago, the deep sea yeti crab became the subject of a life-affirming meme. “This creature has adapted to the crushing pressure and oppressive darkness,” the meme reads. Imbler takes an interest in another aspect of the yeti crab’s life: the oasis. These crabs thrive in hydrothermal vents, rare heated areas of the deep sea where hundreds of these creatures gather at once. Imbler found their own oasis while working at an overwhelmingly white company in Seattle and seeking community in the form of an all-POC queer dance night. This alliance with the humble yeti crab is both a means of solidarity and empowerment for Imbler. By making these seemingly oblique connections, their life stories suddenly make sense.

The sixth essay in the book is about a worm that can grow nearly ten feet long. Imagine that! But really, this chapter is about predators, and what it means to be a human being who is perceived as a woman. The worm in question, known as the sand striker, used to be called the bobbit worm, and the story behind that name is just as fascinating as the worm itself. Imbler is aware that this is not a perfect metaphor. The sand striker has not been socialized into being a predator – they attack their prey for survival, unlike human men. But the story of the sand striker’s original name, and Imbler’s own recollections of their experiences with consent – and more specifically, the lack thereof – drive these resonances home. 

There are some animal analogies that are a little too obvious, and Imbler resists the urge to identify with them without scrutiny. In the chapter on hybrid creatures, Imbler explains how they fought the instinct to write a neat and tidy essay about mixed-race identity that ends with the whole family making dumplings together. They struggle to decide if they want to align themselves with the hybrids of the animal kingdom. What does taxonomy mean to a mixed-race person? 

Other metaphors come more organically. Imbler teaches us about salps, gelatinous, semi-transparent creatures that are part of a group of organisms known as sea squirts. These animals swarm the ocean in groups, an event that Imbler connects to a pride march or a summer day when a group of queers descend upon their section of the beach. The cuttlefish chapter is, of course, about gender. Cuttlefish are best known for their astounding ability to camouflage, changing their color and appearance at will. They also exhibit a behavior known as “splotching,” which occurs when they emit milky blotches in order to indicate to others of their kind that they are not a threat. It’s kind of like “the gay nod,” Imbler writes. They narrate the experience of morphing around queerness and transness, wondering if they will one day emerge in a form that truly satisfies. 

The immortal jellyfish is perhaps the most evocatively named organism in the ocean. As Imbler notes, the name is not exactly accurate, but a catchy name does a lot for scientific funding. In this essay, Imbler surveys their friends, and asks them what they would have done differently if they could have (re)lived as a confident queer or trans youth. Halberstam’s concept of “queer time” feels apt here, but Imbler keeps us in the realm of science, imagining traveling backward to the polyp stage like an immortal jellyfish. As with all hopeless dreams, there is a catch to immortality, but there is something to be said for dreaming up biological impossibilities anyways. And where better to dream, conjuring up memories of the past and future, than the middle of the open ocean?