When I was four or five my mother told me a story about clam fishermen who would cut any starfish they found into pieces and throw it back in the water. They couldn’t understand why they were seeing an increase in the number of starfish until a marine biologist explained their error.
I didn’t grow up to be the marine biologist my mother hoped I would be, but I will be forever grateful to her for making science and scientists cool. And for making me realize starfish were even more amazing than they appeared.
That makes this story that much more heartbreaking to me.
