Aquarium Visitor Asks Marine Biologist If Clownfish 'Actually Found Nemo' One Too Many Times

A staff marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium has filed a formal request to be reassigned from the tropical reef exhibit after a visitor's Nemo-related question — estimated to be the 12,000th such inquiry of her career — triggered what her supervisor described as 'a brief but measurable dissociative episode.' Dr. Coral Abyssal, who has staffed the exhibit for seven years, was explaining the mutualistic relationship between Amphiprion ocellaris and Heteractis magnifica when a child pointed at a clownfish and asked, 'Is that Nemo? Did they find him?' 'That question, in that exact form, has been asked of me on average four point seven times per shift,' Dr. Abyssal said. 'I have answered it with patience, humor, and scientific context approximately 12,000 times. On this occasion, I could not locate any of those qualities within myself.' Witnesses report that Dr. Abyssal paused mid-sentence, looked at the clownfish, looked at the child, and then stared into the anemone exhibit without speaking for approximately ninety seconds. 'Her eyes were open but she wasn't there,' said a colleague who intervened. 'She had the look of someone whose soul has temporarily left the building.' Dr. Abyssal has been reassigned to the deep-sea exhibit, where the organisms are 'sufficiently obscure that no Disney film has been made about them yet.' She reports that visitors to the deep-sea section ask fewer questions overall and that the anglerfish has not been the subject of a major animated feature, 'though I live in fear of the day it happens.' Her replacement at the tropical reef exhibit has been briefed on the Nemo question and has been provided with what staff call 'the response card,' a laminated sheet containing twelve pre-written answers of varying enthusiasm. 'Start with number one,' Dr. Abyssal advised. 'You'll reach number twelve by year three.'