The Mountain in the Sea

An epigraph from Ha’s book explains umwelt as the perceptible part of the world that an organism senses. She argues that the worlds of humans and octopuses are nothing alike.

In Vung Tau, the woman in the abglanz shield interviews Da Minh, a former park ranger from Con Dao’s turtle sanctuary. Da Minh admits that his pay was so low that he and other rangers resorted to selling turtle eggs to make ends meet. He believes he isn’t a bad person and did what was necessary to survive. Da Minh recounts an incident when a fellow ranger named Hien was killed on the beach. While Hien was trying to spear an octopus, another octopus walked on its arms to the shore and slashed Hien to death using a sharpened shell. Da Minh served two months in prison since no one believed his story. After Da Minh’s interview with the woman, he swims in the ocean, and a small insect-like drone bites him, and he drowns.

An epigraph from Ha’s book comments that she’s investigating the possibility of not only octopus consciousness but also culture.

Altantsetseg remotely steers a submersible down to the shipwreck site using control gloves.