@ Tim.

I think that it is an excellent composition and the deadline shoudn't prevent you to perfect this splendid image.

Q: why don't the blobs have same texture as water in the bottle ?

And why a so long time to render ?

In any case, your idea to use the Boolean operation to introduce the ocean into the bottle learn me something, thank you !

They do - it's the same shader as the water inside the bottle. Only difference is the blobs are metaballs and not surrounded by glass. Why so long? Dunno - maybe it's the HDRI background. GI is turned off (I abandoned the GI render cos it was going to take 3 days!) It's the water that makes it grind to a halt.

I had another idea, which was to make the floor in the room a second ocean, but I never got to try that, & heaven only knows how long the render would have been!