Chemosensation

Chemosensation is sensing through chemical cues, especially smell and taste. In Melody Jue: Ocean Memory, Melody Jue uses underwater chemosensation to rethink Ocean Memory because many marine beings encounter the world through waterborne chemicals rather than human-style sight and smell.

The talk’s examples include abalone recognizing healthy ocean smells, brittle stars responding with whole-body movement, microbes navigating chemical gradients, kelp forests preserving slower chemical traces, and acidified water interfering with fish smell. Chemosensation therefore becomes both a sensory and ethical problem: damaging ocean chemistry may damage how marine life remembers, anticipates, navigates, and survives.

Key Claims

• Underwater smell does not require a human nose; it can be whole-body, spatial, chemical, and source-agnostic.
• Translating smell into sound, as in work by Anya Yermakova, Jacob Cram, and Melody Jue, can unsettle human sensory defaults.
• Pollution and Ocean Acidification are not only external harms to bodies; they can disrupt sensing, memory, and future response.

Connections

• Ocean Memory and Milieu-Specific Analysis — broader frame and method.
• Mandy Suzanne Wong — abalone story used to connect smell, culture, and ocean health.
• Anya Yermakova and Jacob Cram — collaborators on kelp-forest smell-to-sound translation.
• Ecological Memory, Multispecies Archives, and Ocean Acidification — linked ecological and memory concepts.