Who needs outer space?

I've never understood the rush to explore the cosmos when so much of our own planet is still very much a mystery. Well, maybe I could be talked into a mission to Mars, but there remain some very alien and unexplored parts of Earth nonetheless. Most notable among these unknown realms is the deep sea. Two of my closest Aussie friends, John and Sam, recently had the good fortune to see a living coelacanth in Indonesia (their photo is above). This deep-dwelling fish is perhaps the epitome of a "living fossil", and might be one of the key evolutionary links between fishes and terrestrial animals. John and Sam shared news and images of this encounter during the same week that my favorite poet alerted me to a NY Times article on the bizarre beasts that reside in the deepest, darkest layers of the oceans. Of course, one need not descend to skull-crushing depths to find a mind-boggling array of undiscovered biodiversity. Dr. Craig Venter's institute has been sampling microbial DNA in near-surface waters of the world's oceans in the Sorcerer II expedition, and has learned just how little we know about the basic species composition, let alone the ecological functions, of microscopic marine life. For those romantics who are sad to have missed the voyages of Cook, Darwin, Burton, Magellan, Shackleton, and the other great pioneers of the bygone golden age of Earth exploration, rest assured that we still have plenty of secrets to unlock on this globe...