Sharon Mosey, ‘Lost at Sea’, Spider, water, glass jar, book, December 2011. Photo: Sharon Mosey. The strange phenomenon of insects far out at sea has been recorded for hundreds of years by people such as Charles Darwin and Captain James Cook. The 1968 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race winner Robin Knox-Johnston saw butterflies far out at sea and worried that he had strayed too close to land. They had in fact been blown out to sea and now faced certain death. I personally have a phobia of butterflies and this spectre of them acts as a metaphor for the terror of the stormy Southern Ocean. Although unable to recreate the horror of the sea in a gallery environment, the magnification of the spider in the water aims to evoke a similar feeling of fear in viewers.