Down At the Bottom of the Sea

I think it'd be cool if the deep sea exploration people could get some more funding, but they're not going to, because there's pretty much no chance of any sort of returns on it. Unless they find sort of endlessly repeating bacon volcano down there, deep sea exploration isn't exactly a profitable excursion. It's interesting, sure. And awesome, certainly, but there isn't much of a way to get any sort of money or benefit from it. Angler fish are badass, but they don't cure any diseases. Not yet anyway (call me in five years).

I guess it sort of sucks that we don't have the money for supporting research just for the sake of research. After all, if you have the choice between giving money to the guys who are trying to cure cancer, or the guys who are trying to figure out just how freaky-looking the fish on the bottom of the ocean are, it's not much of a fight. And I get that, but it's pretty sad when we're in a situation where we can't afford to be curious about the stuff that's right here on our home planet. At least the space travel guys can play the "we may need to colonize another planet at some point guys" card, but the marine biologists? They don't have crap. "Maybe we could like, build a big dome underwater. Like in Bioshock." That's probably far more expensive than it's worth.

I think what they need to do is convince everyone that there's something super valuable at the bottom of the ocean. Like, I dunno, lingerie or something. Then they can do all the research they want while pretending to be building the lingerie mines. Yeah, this plan is fool-proof.