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.

Hundreds of researchers have lost their jobs since then, and many others have left their positions and even the country in search of stable work.

“What is their productivity? What have the scientists created?” Mr. Milei asked about Conicet during his 2023 campaign.

Defenders of Conicet, Argentina’s largest scientific funding and research body, have been quick to describe its accomplishments, including work on coronavirus vaccines, Parkinson’s disease and dinosaur fossils unearthed in Patagonia.

The researchers on the current expedition have largely refrained from commenting on politics and focused on the life aquatic. But other scientists and their supporters organized protests this week against the government’s policies, where scientists gave out starfish-shaped cookies.

“Long live the Sea and Conicet,” the opposition politician Juan Grabois wrote on X as he posted a video of the newly famous plump orange starfish, adding that Mr. Milei “will never understand the beauty of our country nor the greatness of our people.”

As the mollusks entered the public debate, supporters of Mr. Milei directed their scorn at the newfound bottom dwellers.

“Very nice,” Daniel Parisini, an influencer close to Mr. Milei, wrote on X, commenting on a post about the project’s work. “But unfortunately, we’re going to have to blow everything up to extract oil and get rich.”

Other supporters of the government accused a sea slug of being Peronist — a political movement currently in the opposition. La Derecha Diario, a right-wing news outlet supportive of Mr. Milei, called the expedition “an environmentalist psychological operation designed to block the exploitation of natural resources and keep the country in eternal poverty.”

The project’s popularity is not just about politics, or even science. The newly prominent orange starfish has been featured on T-shirts, stickers, yerba mate mugs, birthday cakes and key holders — its popularity stemming from its resemblance to the “SpongeBob” character Patrick and because it looks like it has a butt.

The researchers on the expedition have tried to keep attention on the invertebrates.

“The focus is the animals,” said Daniel Lauretta, the head of the expedition. “The important thing is not us.”

He added that he was enthusiastic about the interest the streaming was generating. “People are rallying behind the Argentine sea,” he said.

The expedition is led by scientists from Conicet and supported by the Schmidt Ocean Institute, an American nonprofit.

The researchers carried out two similar explorations over a decade ago, using nets and trawls. This time, they have navigated the waters of the Mar del Plata canyon for nearly three weeks with technology allowing them to livestream it, with scientists making comments in real time and viewers asking questions and picking names for the newfound creatures.

Children have called in and asked what they should study in order to become scientists. Parents have recreated the seabed at home with flashlights and figurines for their children. Teachers have designed sticker albums with sea creatures for their classes.

“It’s the most exciting thing one could ever imagine,” Pablo Penchaszadeh, 81, a mentor of many of the scientists on the expedition, said in an interview from its boat after taking a photo with a three-foot sea cucumber.

Magdalena Bargero, 32, an Argentine photographer living in San Sebastián, Spain, with a passion for nature, said that she often watches “other things, like the transfer of elephants to a sanctuary in Brazil, and I think I was the only weirdo watching that.” But now, “My friends are sending me photos,” she said, like “during the World Cup.”