Most of the life of the oceans takes place at what to a human is micro-scale. The forests and grasslands of the open oceans consist of swirling fields of single-celled phytoplankton. The ants, deer, and bears that graze and hunt in those forests mostly consist of zooplankton from a fraction of a millimetre to the size of a fingertip. These organisms are the base of the food web, and their adaptability and vulnerability under climate change has big implications for the fish we eat and the seabirds and marine mammals we share the coasts with.
Origami has always celebrated the natural world. (It also has a lot of parallels as a practice with mathematical computer modelling, a mainstay of oceanography and climate research: both are creative negotiations between mathematical rules and biological realism and complexity.) Here we explore origami as a medium for making hidden worlds visible: letting us hold untouchable worlds in our hands.