Sierpinski wannabe

Good thing it's not a Sierpinkski (aka Menger) sponge. If you dropped one into the ocean it would suck the whole thing up. (This distant cousin is only meant to wipe off the kayak it's attached to.)

Huh? Suck up what?

In our reality, it would be very difficult to suck up the whole ocean, but it is theoretically possible. Consider a cube of something, say about the size of an apple. If you draw tic-tac-toe lines on each face of the cube and punch out the centre ninth through each of the three axes, then repeat this process with each of the remaining 8 sub-faces, and continue repeating indefinitely smaller (i.e. recurse) you will end up with a cube that has infinite surface area. Which could suck up an ocean.

At least it would take forever to paint, never mind the Golden Gate Bridge.

See more in the Wikipedia article, including a picture of what I'm talking about.