For the right price a sea slug can carry your name
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By Jim Turner
Posted at 11:46 AM on April 07, 2008
The UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla is offering an idea that local researcher could pick up to help pay for their efforts.
According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Scripps Institution, for the right price you can have your name attached to a new species of sea slug - actually in this case a nudibranch, a pleasantly plump hermaphrodite mollusk with bright orange speckles - or a hydrothermal vent worm or any other newly found critter.
There are reportedly dozens species who names are up for sale by Scripps.
(Scripps Institution of Oceanography is not linked with Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers or the La Jolla-based Scripps Research Institute that is setting up Scripps Florida in Jupiter.)
Bidding starts at $5,000.
The purchase is considered a tax-deductible donation that would benefit the Scripps Oceanographic Collections, which is a repository of ocean life and rock samples collected over the past 100 years.
And these names won't go unrecognized by the international naming group, which is unlike what happens to those who pluck down $50 to the StarRegistry.com for a star to be named after you or a loved one.
Lawrance Bailey, Scripps' senior director of development, told the San Diego newspaper, "Once someone's name is attached to a species, it should last as long as science continues to use scientific names."
Just don't expect your name to be crawling all over the planet.
Most of the species being found by Scripps are now on the deepest parts of the vastly unexplored ocean floor or in lab jars.
Posted at 11:46 AM on April 07, 2008
The UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla is offering an idea that local researcher could pick up to help pay for their efforts.
According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Scripps Institution, for the right price you can have your name attached to a new species of sea slug - actually in this case a nudibranch, a pleasantly plump hermaphrodite mollusk with bright orange speckles - or a hydrothermal vent worm or any other newly found critter.
There are reportedly dozens species who names are up for sale by Scripps.
(Scripps Institution of Oceanography is not linked with Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers or the La Jolla-based Scripps Research Institute that is setting up Scripps Florida in Jupiter.)
Bidding starts at $5,000.
The purchase is considered a tax-deductible donation that would benefit the Scripps Oceanographic Collections, which is a repository of ocean life and rock samples collected over the past 100 years.
And these names won't go unrecognized by the international naming group, which is unlike what happens to those who pluck down $50 to the StarRegistry.com for a star to be named after you or a loved one.
Lawrance Bailey, Scripps' senior director of development, told the San Diego newspaper, "Once someone's name is attached to a species, it should last as long as science continues to use scientific names."
Just don't expect your name to be crawling all over the planet.
Most of the species being found by Scripps are now on the deepest parts of the vastly unexplored ocean floor or in lab jars.
