Extraterrestrials? Seriously?

 "Medium" can be an interesting place to read, even learn stuff... maybe. There was one today that put my back up however. It started by the author saying they worked at NOAA, and extraterrestrials live under the oceans.

Whoa pardner. Got any proof that they're from off-planet?

Let's start with two premises. 

First, we haven't discovered everything there is on this planet yet. However, we think we are the prime species, have the best brains, best technology, etc., etc. So far we've proved we're pretty arrogant as a species. We love to claim we are the most advanced creatures/beings ever to have evolved on this planet. 

Second, we continue to find things on this planet we can't explain... yet. It may be as simple as crop circles, which we've quickly learned can be done very elaborately by a cooperating bunch of high school kids who happen to be able to scrape a bit of radium from old watches as "proof" of space aliens. It may be as complex as the etchings on the Nazca Plain, which nobody has duplicated recently, so "therefore no human ever has." Only recently with lidar are we understanding the complexity of the temples and roads of a previous culture which marked solstices and equinoxes, in conjunction with a huge cultural network of roads for trading, among other things, both south and north of our border. Trees and much willful destruction have long hidden most of it. Technology and height are revealing it.

 Because we haven't ourselves done these things, it's very easy to claim humans never did, since early ones had to have been primitive, right? Gods, space aliens, who knows what people give credit to for what's in front of eyes willing to explore and see?

We can't breathe under water. In our arrogance, we have concluded since we are the only (self-defined) intelligent life here, that nothing intelligent lives under water. We are "the only species" to build things, therefore nothing has been built under water. 

We are learning, some of us, just how intelligent some other species are. They communicate. They build societies, cooperate in hunting and gathering. They use tools. But since we can build machines and tools to kill them, they're obviously not as smart as us. We are still supreme because we say we are. And thus, anything smarter than we are must be one of two things: a God, or a space alien. Despite learning more on a nearly daily basis of how much we do not know about the planet we live on, our arrogance still holds sway over our beliefs. (Some might say that alone proves our lack of intelligence.)

Now, about our oceans: stuff is happening there, stuff we can't exactly explain. Some of it is sets of noises, patterns still unexplained. Once heard and samples sent to other world locations, more are heard, recorded. They act in concert with each other. Ideas arise, but explanations are not yet found. So far it is assumed to be some life form, communicating across the ocean floor with another life form, though seemingly instantaneously. They seem to be very deep on the ocean bottom, so theories even arise as to what possibly might be a food source for something so... odd.

Remember those "tic-tac" shaped UFOs from a year or four back? Pilots had videos, possibly showing sharp right angle turns, dives into the ocean not creating splashes, things previously unobserved, unexplained. (Shhhh, don't tell anybody, you might lose your job when they decided you're unwell. Unfit.) Now our modern technology shows unexplained trails underwater. Of course, radar worked at revealing  previously hidden subs and its secrets were kept... for a while.

We're (they're) not saying it's pick-an-enemy-state's advanced technology doing it. The author says they're claiming space aliens, and have 'reasons" why it can't be us...yet. Or even if it still is way-y-y-y-y beyond our capability, but not any kind of human, they have to claim it's some undiscovered space alien species.

Why? Why can't it be something like a new-to-us intelligent species which also evolved on this planet, hidden from us until recently because hiding is part of their advanced technology too? Note I'm not saying it is, I'm saying they haven't/can't prove that it/they didn't originate here. There are tales and myths of various sea people through the ages. If they were real, couldn't it be possible they figured out how violent and dangerous humans can be and have learned to stay well away from us for their own safety? We were starting to do a pretty good job of covering the oceans as time went on. I'd avoid us!

But we're that invested in our arrogance, believing nothing better than us exists or ever existed on our planet. Has to be from elsewhere then.

Since I don't have that answer, I have come up with another set of questions, starting with a different premise. We know our activities are changing our planet, including our oceans. Global heating is changing currents, temperatures, salinity, nutrient distributions. Sea life evolved in stability for those factors, one reason saltwater aquarium fish are so vulnerable, as tiny water amounts change water quality significantly with small variations in any single factor, often resulting in fatalities. (Freshwater fish always have variability, including each time it rains, and evolved for it.)  Corals are bleaching. Life forms are decreasing, starving, sickening, dying. Plastic pollutes nearly every bit of it. Garbage and chemicals are being dumped there in ever increasing numbers. Our mechanical noises harm certain life forms. 

All these things we know. Now throw in an untested theory about what the new observations mean.

So, if we actually have a technological, intelligent life form in our oceans, now what? Never mind where they might be from right now, let's suppose for a minute they really are there. What's next? Do they rise up to stop us from killing off life on this planet, supposedly them as well? Do they just die along with all the rest of us? Are they just observers, making us the subject of some documentary as an object lesson to others about what not to do to your home planet?

Or are they just waiting for us to finish the job? Are we improving the planet for their needs, empty of life and ready for reseeding the flora and fauna to support their lives once we've proved we're a failed experiment? Or even zookeepers of many of our current species, holding them in stasis for a return and another try? I have read so many sci-fi stories and books, the list of improbable possibilities is very long. If they are there, intelligent and with advanced technology, the biggest question for me is why?

We may be very arrogant a species, but we do not lack for imagination, or at least not all of us.

It just isn't proof, either way.