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Americas|A Starfish, a President and a Deep-Sea Frenzy in Argentina
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/world/americas/argentina-starfish-milei-conicet.html
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A livestream of an undersea project has captivated Argentina as President Javier Milei wields a chain saw on the budget for science.
Video
By Emma Bubola and Lucía Cholakian Herrera
Reporting from Buenos Aires
Aug. 8, 2025Updated 8:52 a.m. ET
Couples in Buenos Aires canceled weekend plans to tune in. Friends crammed together on couches, and family chats buzzed with updates. But the spectacle — the talk all over Argentina, with over a million viewers — was not a Lionel Messi soccer match or a presidential debate.
It was a live video of crustaceans, sponges and sea cucumbers crawling, creeping and just lolling around the Mar del Plata canyon, off the Argentine coast.
The livestream over the past week has transformed a marine exploration project into an internet sensation and shellfish into unexpected standard-bearers for those who oppose President Javier Milei’s threats to cut and privatize state-funded science.
The marine project, led by scientists from Conicet, Argentina’s national scientific council, has reached the front pages of national newspapers, become a talking point on TV shows and been projected on the walls of a nightclub in Buenos Aires. Viewers have adopted a purple sea cucumber as their “little sweet potato,” named a pink lobster Barbie and made art out of a starfish that looks like a character from “SpongeBob.”
“It’s very gripping,” Natalia Costanzo, 45, a restorer in Buenos Aires, said of the streaming, which she has been watching with her family during dinner. “And it’s an act of resistance.”
Mr. Milei has sought to curb Argentina’s chronic inflation and lessen its fiscal deficit, drawing outrage from progressives and praise from conservatives for his chain-saw approach to public spending. One of his targets has been research programs, and he has slashed the budget for scientific research by over 20 percent since gaining office in 2023.
