I decided to ask around on all the fish/ocean blogs I follow: how do you learn more about the ocean?? I love the ocean and I really wanna learn more about my favorite sea creatures and beyond but I have no idea how to get started. Are there documentaries or shows your recommend? How do you go about doing research for fun (the American school system has failed me, go figure)? How do you even remember it all? I crave to learn but where I could possibly start is as vast as the ocean itself.
What a fun question! It is admittedly a bit difficult to go back to the beginning of my ocean-learning days, since I can't remember a time when I wasn't super into water and aquatic things, but I'll try! I think I started learning about oceans through books, I'd read and borrow a lot of fish and marine biology books at the library. I think they're the very best place to look to at first if you struggle with the paralysis of having too many things to do or too many places to look from! Libraries are really good sources of information, but unlike the internet, the resources are finite in some way, they're on physical paper, and tied to the place itself (until you take them home of course!), which at least to me makes it easier to start looking for what I want to know more about. Libraries make it easier for me to read things too, I get very distracted at home. Only when I am in the peace and quiet in between the bookshelves can I focus!
Another place that was no doubt a source of learning for me was natural history museums and aquariums. I was (..am) obsessed with the Finnish Museum of Natural History specifically, it was a must-visit every time we went to the capital city area up until the pandemic. Aquariums we went to less so, but the education they provide there is a gem! Sometimes you can even talk to an employee if you're lucky enough and learn extra bits of information about things. Not always free like libraries, but worth a shot if you get the opportunities to visit.
I've also watched and still watch marine/freshwater life documentaries and other educational shows! Usually I'd opportunistically go and watch them whenever one popped up on the TV, instead of going out to find them myself. This, and the fact that it's been many years since I saw some, I can't recall many of the names of the documentaries I've seen! There were some about dolphins and their fascinating behaviour and hunting habits, and this cool documentary series that divided its episodes into two parts with pure opposite climates and cultures with opposite lifestyles, but I can't seem to find the ones I'm thinking of!!! ...Ah, well. I can recommend you Planet Earth (2006), The Blue Planet (2001) and Blue Planet II (2017) from BBC, and Life on Our Planet (2023) which I'm currently watching on Netflix! Secrets of the Whales (2021) from National Geographic I didn't quite finish but it was still quite interesting, focuses on four species of whales.
As for doing my research... well, once I was old enough to get on the internet and I was super duper fixated on a specific species of animal or a group of animals, I'd do this thing where I look up the animal's name and slowly start going through every website that popped up, in order, bookmarking the websites with the most or most interesting information. I still do it. I don't know if it's the "correct" way, could there even be a correct way..? I doubt it, and it does give you many sources to reference with each other! I also like to look through videos of these animals, but, that's probably a given. If you're looking for fish info specifically, I like to fall back on FishBase, SeriouslyFish and A-Z Animals when I'm unsure about something (besides checking multiple sources), as far as I know they're trustworthy.
When it comes to remembering, I unfortunately cannot offer you any tips! I am fortunate in that I have naturally good memory and absorb information with relative ease, so I don't really have any tips for remembering things... though I do like to sort large batches of information into charts, like how I did when I was learning to take care of my shrimp! I looked through several websites and collected the suggested parameters from each, and compared them with each other. I did the same thing when I was making my informational comic about bigfin squids, I collected the depths and places in which squids were spotted in into charts. Perhaps that is helpful in some way!
So! TL;DR, libraries, documentaries, museums, aquariums, just plain old internet research. I hope this helps you in some way!!! <33 Well wishes from the fishes!
