Spandrels of the Sea: From Evolution’s Byproducts to Blueprints for Equity and Representation in Ocean Conservation
Unintended consequences can become indispensable — in architecture and in efforts to preserve life on Earth.
The post Spandrels of the Sea: From Evolution’s Byproducts to Blueprints for Equity and Representation in Ocean Conservation appeared first on The Revelator.
Conservation isn’t always about grand designs. Sometimes the most powerful tools are byproducts of other work — unintended consequences that become indispensable.
Think of the spaces that emerge between a dome and its arches. No one designs these triangles. They simply arise, an inevitable feature of the structure. Yet in the Basilica of San Marco in Venice, the Alhambra in Spain, or the Taj Mahal in India, these spaces are decorated with lavish mosaics of gold and glass, or with paintings and iconography so beautiful that they become the focal point of the entire building. They’re what biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin called spandrels.
Spandrel at La Mezquita de Córdoba, Andalucía, Spain. Photo: Brent Miller (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
In 1979 Gould and Lewontin borrowed this architectural term to challenge the idea that every biological trait is a perfect adaptation honed by natural selection. In their essay, “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm,” they argued that some traits arise as inevitable byproducts of structure or developmental constraints. Eventually these spandrels may be repurposed with a new function.
Once you understand the idea, you can’t help but see spandrels everywhere. Not just in cathedrals, but in our own systems. Conservation, like nature, generates byproducts. Some fade into obscurity. Others, once decorated with meaning, become indispensable to our work.
The Spandrel in Evolutionary Biology: Origin and Reasoning
The mid-20th century was dominated by what Gould and Lewontin called the adaptationist programme: the assumption that every trait must be adaptive, shaped directly by natural selection. If birds had red plumage, it must confer advantage. If humans had chins, they must aid chewing or sexual display. The tiny arms of a Tyrannosaurus rex must have served a purpose.
Gould and Lewontin resisted this Panglossian optimism, named for Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss, who insisted, in a jab at the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz, that all features exist in “the best of all possible worlds.” They urged scientists to consider whether traits might simply be incidental byproducts of other evolutionary processes.
When domes meet arches, the leftover triangular spandrels are unavoidable. In the same way, some traits in organisms show up simply because of limits in embryonic development, links between traits, or even random chance. Later these features may be put to use in a process known as “exaptation,” a term introduced by Gould and paleontologist Elizabeth Vrba in 1982.
Classic examples of biological spandrels abound. Male nipples, for instance, persist as a feature retained from our shared embryology with females. The famously tiny arms of T. rex may have shrunk as an unintended consequence of its skull and jaw enlarging over evolutionary time. Human cognition itself, manifested in art, religion, and music, may be a by-product of neural circuits originally evolved for language and pattern recognition. Even the panda’s so-called “thumb,” a modified wrist bone, began as a structural constraint before being coopted into a remarkably effective bamboo-stripping tool.
Together these cases reveal how traits that emerge incidentally can be repurposed — “decorated,” as Gould might say — into vital adaptations.
From Biology to Conservation: The Ocean’s Decorated Spandrels
If spandrels remind us to look for unintended byproducts in organisms, the metaphor helps us analyze our own conservation practice. Ocean conservation produces spandrels too: outcomes not deliberately designed but emerging from structural constraints, cultural forces, or institutional habits.
Some fade away. Others are decorated — infused with meaning until they become central to our storytelling, fundraising, and advocacy. Just as San Marco’s spandrels hold shimmering mosaics, conservation’s byproducts often bear the weight of public engagement.
Decorated Conservation Spandrels
Charismatic megafauna: Fascination with whales, dolphins, and turtles wasn’t engineered. It arose culturally through storytelling, religion, aquariums and documentaries. Conservationists later took advantage of that, making these species ambassadors for bycatch reform, fisheries policy, and climate resilience.
Citizen science: Born from scarcity, it began as a stopgap for limited funding and capacity. Today it empowers stewardship, ownership, and participatory democracy.
Conservation tourism: Shark dives and manta snorkeling began as commercial novelties. Reframed, they became conservation tools, turning spectacle into empathy and tourists into donors.
Ocean days and hashtags: UN “international days” were bureaucratic spandrels. Activists decorated them into rituals for fundraising, awareness, and norm-building.
#OceanOptimism: Emerging from burnout and doom fatigue, #oceanoptimism wasn’t a designed strategy. But once decorated, it reframed narratives, energized practitioners, and invited new communities into ocean care.
Hunting for Spandrels: A Framework for Practice
Conservation often produces unexpected side effects: some trivial, some troublesome, some surprisingly useful. Instead of ignoring or lamenting these byproducts, we can deliberately scan for them and ask: What hidden opportunities might they hold?
That’s the heart of what I call “spandrel hunting.” Here’s a practical way to do it:
Identify the byproducts: Notice the extra things our work generates, from viral memes to volunteer enthusiasm to funder metrics.
Diagnose spandrelness: Ask whether these features arose by design or simply as incidental outcomes.
Scan for coopt potential: Explore how unintended products can be repurposed into advocacy or engagement tools.
Watch for self-defeating spandrels: Stay alert to “false friends” like paper parks, plastics-only campaigns, or other distractions that undermine deeper goals.
Institutionalize the scan: Build spandrel-hunting into evaluations, retrospectives, and funding cycles so it becomes routine practice.
In this way conservation can reframe failure and side effects into raw material for innovation — irritants that can be polished into mosaics.
Case Study: Sharks, Spectacle, and the Spandrels of Charisma
For much of the 20th century, sharks were cultural villains. The movie Jaws and its imitators spurred fear and culls. No strategist would have proposed sharks as conservation icons.
And yet spandrels emerged. Discovery Channel’s Shark Week (1988) was a ratings ploy, not a conservation platform. Its lurid fearmongering carved sharks into public consciousness. Simultaneously, coastal fishers turned to tourism as economies shifted. Shark diving in the Bahamas, South Africa, Fiji, and Palau revealed living sharks’ economic value: millions annually, far surpassing fishing revenue.
Conservationists decorated these spandrels. NGOs injected science into Shark Week narratives. Operators partnered with researchers, blending spectacle with tagging and data collection. Even Jaws author Peter Benchley recanted, becoming a shark advocate.
But the risks remain. Sensationalist media still perpetuate myths. Some tourism practices alter shark behavior. And the megafauna focus risks neglecting less telegenic species.
The shark spandrel offers several lessons. First, visibility matters, even when it begins in a negative light, as with the fear stoked by Jaws and early Shark Week spectacles.
Second, economic pivots, such as the rise of shark tourism, can transform these unintended byproducts into powerful conservation assets.
Third, cultural narratives can be “hacked” to shift public perception, turning once-vilified predators into ambassadors for ocean health.
Finally, there’s a caution: Over-decorating a spandrel can mislead or distract, as sensationalism sometimes overshadows science or diverts attention from less charismatic but equally threatened species.
Future Spandrels: Byproducts as Pathways to Justice and Representation
The spandrels of tomorrow won’t just be about memes or metrics. They’ll also emerge in the spaces where conservation bumps into questions of justice, representation, and whose stories are told. The future spandrel landscape is rich with opportunities to elevate Indigenous stewardship, amplify BIPOC and LGBTQ voices, and redirect cultural byproducts into tools for equity as well as ecology.
Ocean plastic cleanups: Photogenic and headline-friendly, but often narrow and sometimes scientifically shaky. They can, however, be reframed as on-ramps into bigger justice debates about petrochemicals, environmental racism, and the frontline communities most hurt by waste and toxic industries.
Hashtag and meme culture: Algorithmic byproducts that can be harnessed as equity pivots, amplifying hashtags like #BlackInOceanScience, #IndigenousKnowledge, #LandBack, #BlackBirders, or #QueerInScience alongside micro-actions and entry-level engagement.
Funder metrics: Donor-driven and often ill-fitting, but when redirected to track inclusion (Black-led organizations, Indigenous stewardship roles, community participation), they can make funder logic itself a lever for equity.
Doom fatigue: Burnout as a psychological spandrel. When acknowledged and reframed, it can open the door to movements like #OceanOptimism that decorate despair with agency. Highlight how communities of color and Indigenous groups have practiced resilience under centuries of ecological and cultural stress.
30×30 proliferation: Risks creating “paper parks,” but even shallow commitments can normalize the idea of large-scale protection and provide political footholds for deeper action. Coopt 30×30 momentum to emphasize Indigenous-led MPAs and community tenure rights, reframing the spandrel of empty targets into footholds for lasting sovereignty and equity.
Conservation tourism shifts: Once sold as selfies and thrills, now reframed as ambassador programs that foreground Native guides, local narratives, and traditional ecological knowledge ensuring visitors learn whose waters they’re in and whose stories they’re hearing.
Blue economy buzzword: Vague and overused, but politically potent. The “blue economy” can be hacked to prioritize equity and sovereignty, Indigenous tenure, small-scale fishers, and coastal communities too often sidelined in ocean development schemes.
Influencer science: Deliberately cultivate and platform Black, Brown, and Indigenous scientists as digital ambassadors on TikTok, Instagram, and beyond. Invest in training, partnerships, and amplification so that the algorithmic by-product of “influencer science” broadens whose faces and voices represent ocean knowledge.
By treating these cultural and institutional byproducts not as noise but as raw material, conservation can reroute attention and energy toward hidden representation gaps, making equity and inclusion inseparable from innovation and impact.
Final Thought: Decorating Our Own Spandrels
The genius of Gould and Lewontin’s spandrel metaphor was not to deny adaptation but to guard against easy narratives. In evolution not every trait is adaptive. In conservation not every tool was designed. But accidents can be opportunities. Side effects can become strategies. Byproducts can become mosaics.
Many of our most powerful tools (charismatic species, citizen science, Shark Week) began as spandrels, emerging as a result of cultural and economic factors and only later becoming central to the work we do to save our ocean.
The ocean’s future may depend on our ability to keep scanning for these spandrels: to notice the byproducts of our work, ask what might be coopted, and decorate them into mosaics of resilience. If we decorate tomorrow’s spandrels with justice and inclusion, the mosaics we leave will reflect not only resilience, but whose voices and visions truly belong in the ocean’s future.
Our basilica of conservation is still under construction. The dome rises. The arches stand. The spandrels are waiting.
Previously in The Revelator:
Incredible Journeys: Migratory Sharks on the Move
The post Spandrels of the Sea: From Evolution’s Byproducts to Blueprints for Equity and Representation in Ocean Conservation appeared first on The Revelator.
