Chapter Text
In a world where saltwater is a death sentence, the ocean is completely unexplored. It was believed that either nothing lived down there, or it was full of monsters that would drag their ships down if they went too far beyond the shore.
Marcy found herself in a unique position when she discovered this. She was attending Newtopia University when this interesting fact caught her eye. Knowing amphibians' tumultuous relationship with salt, the teenager decided to test whether or not it was actually toxic. It wasn't, it was just salt.
The girl begins sneaking out to the smallest and least populated harbor, an old one with sediment build up, crumbling docs, and a few worn aground boats. The sea spray wall being the only new thing in the area. She dives and finds the ruins of sunken ships filled with sealed wine vessels and precious metals. She writes her final paper on this harbor, and it gains a lot of attention fairly quickly.
She begins to apprentice under and gather data for various different kinds of scholars from historians, economists, and archeologists to every kind of naturalist under the sun. Marcy even begins to do some of her own research, going out on Merchant ships and diving around mainland coastal cities and in deeper waters.
Marcy gets her answer- yes. Luckily, she's played Subnautica enough times to be desensitized. The ocean only caps out at about 40 meters deep, so they aren't too big, and she has a pully system to get out fast if need be.
She even begins to capture smaller fish species and other marine life to study in Newtopia, creating the first ever aquarium.
She begins to be known as the Naturalist of the Abyss