by Carl Safina
With over two and a half billion people living on less than two dollars a day, born into hunger, filth, infection, ignorance, oppression, violence, and no options, it seems to me that the loss of natural beauty and diversity constitutes a terrible ante paid just for coming into a world where the slices shrink faster than the pie can possibly grow. It appears irrational to think that more growth can solve anything at all. Quite the contrary; growing smaller seems the best hope for bringing justice and compassion—or even a decent meal—within reach of many people, especially in the generation coming along.
* * *
It takes neither justice nor compassion to ready a duck for breeding, but it does take new outerwear. The last of winter’s Long-tailed Ducks look lustrous with new feathers. The drab-feathered loons of winter, too, have transformed into sleek breeding dress, with checkered jackets and velvety black plush heads setting off their crimson eyes. Some are flying; quite a few are floating in the bay’s little swells. One surfaces with a wriggling fish. A friend of mine once tried to aid an ailing loon. Resisting rescue, it skewered his cheek. He says you can’t believe how fast they are. I believe it. I keep scanning.
A big flock of Sanderlings—about two hundred—surprises me on the bay shore. Normally they stay along the ocean. And this isn’t just the largest flock I’ve seen in a long while; it will be the last large group I’ll see this season.
With each flock of sandpipers alighting to run the waves and every line of sea ducks beating north, I’m reminded that we’ve got another chance. These creatures inspire me. Oblivious to their fate, they do as always: strive to survive against long odds in a world of change. They teach Equanimity 101, with a vengeance.
* * *
Every adult person has experienced bodily exactly what it means to stop growing and continue developing. Who would go back to the drama and the growing pains of their teen years? So why do economists insist on pegging humanity perpetually in its awkward, temperamental, pimply, adolescent growth spurt? As a more mature and level-headed grown-up, humanity could continue developing for the rest of its life.
Development would look like: education, vocational training, democracy, human rights; better tech, better-quality goods and services; fair health care; better family time; clean air and water; clean energy; art, beauty, wildlife, civility. Rather than focusing on growth and the (increasingly unlikely) possibility of further development, we could focus on development with the (increasingly implausible) possibility of growth. That thought would never cross the mind of most economists—but focusing on improvement wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
And I wonder if it would even be so hard. In a matter of days during the fall of 2008, the United States and other governments abandoned decades of economic doctrine to rescue a reckless financial system from global collapse. Yet, decade after decade, we make no move to stop the growth obsession that is wrecking the mother of economies, the planet itself. Economists don’t seem to have noticed that the economy sits entirely within the ecology. An economy shifting from growth to development, from combustion to renewable energy, for instance, would still entail tremendous investment opportunities.
During challenging ocean conditions, certain sea jellies “de-grow.” They don’t just lose fat or slim down; they actually lose cells and simplify structures. When times are good, they regrow. Because they are adding new cells and regrowing structures (not just replumping), they are actually rejuvenated—younger than they were. On the other end of the scale, Edward Abbey long ago observed that growth for the sake of continuous growth is the strategy of cancer. Knowing what we now know, it appears that the world can’t produce enough to grow our way out of poverty. But we could certainly shrink our way out. The goal of giving people more per person would be most quickly and easily accomplished fastest by having fewer people. Knowing what we know now, if I were going to pattern my economy and society on anything, I’d go with the forever-young jellyfish and ditch the cancer model.
* * *
The first Ruddy Turnstones to make it as far north as Lazy Point this year are foraging around some barnacle-encrusted rocks. Did I see any of these same individuals in the Caribbean? Probably not, but it’s an appealing possibility.
The water here is clear enough to see bottom a few yards from shore. And it’s late enough in the month that there should be some bass here already. I scan almost instinctively for signs of fish, thinking that the first few must have arrived by now.
On the marsh, Barn Swallows have indeed begun arriving in some numbers. Their physical elegance—their metallic-blue plumage and the streaming feathers of their deep-forked tail—and their masterfully controlled grace are always arresting, always a favorite.
Our salt-pond Ospreys again stand proudly in renewed attendance, the female at the nest, the male on a nearby pole. They, too, have weathered the storm, after all. He looks like he has some netting lightly tangled on one foot. This kind of thing kills birds, but when he shifts his weight the netting falls off. His other foot grips a small Striped Bass, confirming my suspicions: the bass are already arriving.
* * *
Over near the lighthouse, the recent storm has shoved thousands of bowling-ball-sized boulders high up on the beach, past the reach of the tides. I’ve been here during the crash and surge of thunderous rumbles before. Among the lobbed rocks lies a galaxy of storm-cast sea stars, uncountable multitudes, stretching out of sight down the shoreline. For the rummaging gulls, the fallen stars are bounty.
Because the ocean stays colder longer than the air, it’s spring on land but still a more or less winter sea. Even though so many have passed in the last couple of weeks, several thousand sea ducks, all now molted into their finest courting plumage, pepper the ocean off the lighthouse. As always, they’re feeding here, drifting in the strong tidal currents over the best foraging bottom, then lifting off in sheets to fly uptide to the beginning of the drift. This duck conveyor has been operating for months. And like some biblical miracle or mythical fable of inexhaustible abundance, the place continues to produce for them. Having braved the spray of a hundred frozen nights and weathered yesterday’s storm, they will soon join the lines withdrawing northward.
Fifty feet from the high-tide line lies the shore of a small, shallow freshwater pond, into which the storm has washed seashells and a skate’s carcass. I’m wondering if the pond’s amphibians have perished from the brine. But in the water swim tadpoles—dozens of them. Has evolution forged a more salt-tolerant frog here? Or maybe the eight inches of rain the storm doused us with amply diluted the saltwater that washed in. Just a few paces away, surf growls. Fishing boats ply the ocean beyond. Yet I’m watching tadpoles. One can penetrate deep forest and deep ocean, but there’s no such thing as deep coast. The coast is all about borders. It’s all edges and angles, like Thelonius Monk music. It’s bebop habitat.
It’s hard to walk briskly at this time of year; the accelerating pace of unfolding spring slows my own. I repeatedly stop—to watch what’s moving. Soon the torrent of migrants will completely overwhelm my ability to keep up with all the changes. But it’s easy to revel in the exuberance and the sense of rebirth, renewal.
MAY
April showers have wrought May bouquets. Purple-blossomed beach peas now line the sand path to the beach. Shadbush, Beach Plum, and Wax Myrtle blooms paint the higher marsh and the wild, scruffy yards around our cottages in luxuriant broad-brushed whites, perfuming the almost-warm air. Around the marsh edges, I try not to alarm the fiddler crabs that bustle around their burrows as they spring-clean for the May Queen.
* * *
By the second week of May I’ve seen no swirls or splashes indicating fish along our shore. But the date suggests that a few casts would be reasonable. So toward dusk I take a rod and walk to the Cut.
The tide is ebbing nicely, creating a swift, riverine current. When the water pours from the bay into the Sound like this, fish—if there are any—concentrate in the narrow Cut, stemming the acce
lerated flow while waiting for any smaller fish being swept into striking range.
Nothing is showing at the surface. But maybe some fish are holding near the bottom. I choose a small lure that sinks rapidly and resembles a little fish swimming. I cast it out, reel it back.
Fishing isn’t esoteric or mysterious. There’re just various facts and feelings one accumulates: where to go, when, how to tell if it’s worth staying; how to judge when the wind will help or hinder; knowing the local haunts and movements of different fish throughout the year; various lures and baits; which populations remain robust or depleted. All this accumulated knowledge merely facilitates informed guesswork. The most valuable thing one can learn is how much you don’t know. So you try a lure you think will work; if it doesn’t work, you try another.
* * *
What I most like about fishing is knowing a place well enough to find the fish. In an exotic locale, especially with a guide, fishing becomes just a matter of following instructions and then having a fish at the end of a line. Separated from my own understanding of the place, my seasons there, my kitchen, and my friends, fishing loses most of its appeal.
It’s not that I don’t simply enjoy catching fish; I do. There remains the sudden connection to that startling aliveness. And how else would you know what’s in all that deep, dark water? But to me, home water is best. To know what’s in that water before you get there, to find it where you seek it, and to conjure it into grasp; these things create a different affirmation of intimacy. It’s a little like the difference between meeting a stranger and meeting someone who’s waiting for you.
Fishing provides time to think, and reason not to. If you have the virtue of patience, an hour or two of casting alone is plenty of time to review all you’ve learned about the grand themes of life. It’s time enough to realize that every generalization stands opposed by a mosaic of exceptions, and that the biggest truths are few indeed. Meanwhile, you feel the wind shift and the temperature change. You might simply decide to be present, and observe a few firm facts about the drifting clouds.
You cast again. And again. Investing your effort, trying and failing, a modicum of eventual success, and life-and-death stakes—the act becomes allegory. And precisely because it carries symbolic qualities, fishing can, in its best moments, feel like art.
Fishing in a place is a meditation on the rhythm of a tide, a season, the arc of a year, and the seasons of a life. The more repetitive, the better, because the experience is like a wheel that—by going around and around as though doing the same thing—continually covers new ground, bringing you to a very different place.
* * *
The lure comes wiggling to my rod; I cast again.
For those who don’t fish, the ocean is just scenery. The beauty in fishing comes to the senses as a search for connection with deep-dwelling mysteries. Being at the water becomes a very different proposition when you’re sending forth that inquiring, hopeful filament.
I fish to scratch the surface of those mysteries, for nearness to the beautiful, and to reassure myself that the world remains. I fish to wash off some of my grief for the peace we so squander. I fish to dip into that great and awesome pool of power that propels these epic migrations. I fish to feel—and steal—a little of that energy.
Connection creates meaning. And so fishing provides meaning—and a full stomach. Thoreau observed, “Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing it is not fish they are after.” Well, Henry, I am, indeed, after fish. My fishing has no arbitrary goal, nor the artificial scorecard of mere sports. It’s not a game. A fish is a real thing. Its death is a real death.
Hunting and killing come naturally to cats and people. And to fish, too. Many things that are “in the blood” are not to be recommended. But I think a modicum of fishing justifiable for the table and for sharing with friends. Most people get all their food—every scrap of it, for the long duration of their lives—across a counter. I prefer not to imagine such a severed life.
When you’re eating wild, every meal carries a narrative. If most days go forgotten into the junk heap we create of our lives, it may be because we fuel our days with things that come and go like mail addressed to someone else, instead of writing our own story.
But a day remembered is a day lived, and fishing harbors that potential. So I fish to obtain stories and share them into memory. Fishing’s stories often involve many of the people at my table. We share the prize we’ve captured. We share adventures and the storytelling impulse that’s as basic to being human as tales around cave fires. This is impossible with supermarket food, which just shows up, devoid of identity, bereft of experience.
The food I seek derives from a wondrous proposition: you look out at that infinite span of water that gift-wraps the planet and you say, “Get dinner.” Needles would spring willingly from haystacks before finding a fish in a whole ocean seemed reasonable. The true act of fishing is attaining some sense of when, where, and how to begin searching for a fish. Weather, tides, moon phases, and seasons—in a circular, self-reinforcing way, catching a fish both provides and requires a sense of place.
The experiences build, so that each time you sweep your eyes over the horizon you think of all the prior times and what happened. As teenagers, we rigged for fishing the way Neolithic hunters prepared for the hunt, a sacred rite of great spiritual import, critical for survival. Fishing seemed a wilderness experience no matter how close to home I pursued it. We fished, brought our catch to our secret campsite in the woods, and hid our bicycles with leaves. We waited until dark to make a small fire, so no one could see our smoke rising. A bellyful of fried fish plus a whole package of cookies is a good, rounded meal for a sixteen-year-old. We fell asleep to owls, and woke to crows.
As the years layer up, you can catch a tiny, silvery, firsthand glimpse of time. Your mind relives all those evenings, friends, and meals. A string of notes on the strand of time makes life’s music. I’m therefore grateful to be here, hunting my food in the water.
* * *
On this side of the Cut, a shelf of cobblestone-sized rocks forms a shallow reef a few feet deep. The rest of the channel is about twelve feet deep. Fish often position themselves on that shallow reef because the squeeze narrows their prey’s escape options. So I’ve planted myself a little uptide, where the current sweeps my lure over the shallows. Again I cast about halfway across the channel, let the line sink to where the fish might be, and reel back the wiggling lure.
For all I appreciate about fishing, there is no hiding the fact that its basic premise is an unfair deception. It has another fundamental drawback: it’s not much fun for the fish. The correct mental posture for fishing always keeps that fact in mind. Some people make a hash of it.
I continue casting and reeling back.
One autumn I lost my appetite for the killing. I was on a friend’s boat and we were jigging Bluefish from a deep rip, and my heart just went out of it. This had been building for months. Then I looked over the side and saw thousands upon thousands of glittering anchovy scales just drifting loose in the tidal current, mute testimony of the violent siege and chaos beneath our hull. I realized that if the Bluefish and I could converse about appetites and predatory urges, we’d understand each other well. The anchovies would certainly have urged me back into the fray, since every Bluefish I took meant dozens of anchovies rescued for the day. Just a few miles and two centuries away from where we drifted, Benjamin Franklin, then a vegetarian, had a similar thought:
In my first voyage from Boston, being becalm’d off Block Island, our people set about catching cod, and hauled up a great many. Hitherto I had stuck to my resolution of not eating animal food … taking every fish as a kind of unprovoked murder, since none of them had, or ever could do us any injury that might justify the slaughter. All this seemed very reasonable. But I had formerly been a great lover of fish, and, when this came hot out of the frying-pan, it smelt admirably well. I balanc’d some time between principle and inclination, till I rec
ollected that, when the fish were opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs; then thought I, “If you eat one another, I don’t see why we mayn’t eat you.” So I din’d upon cod very heartily.… So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.
If Ben Franklin stopped to fish for cod off Block Island today with only the tools available then, he and his comrades would likely all have dined as vegetarians; cod are now scarce. But having found and made my own reasons for being here, my main quarry is the Striped Bass. Following their deep crash from overfishing in the 1980s, the Striped Bass’s subsequent recovery is perhaps the world’s best fisheries management success, a triumph of political discipline, a lesson in healing, and a source of solace in a world so full of holes.
In my kind of fishing, there are two varieties of disappointments. One makes a hole in dinner plans; for that, vegetables suffice. The other punctures your heart. Many of the creatures that should be in a place at an appointed time and season come no longer. Menu substitutions might work for dinner, but not for the future of the world. I have watched animals that once thrilled me—like Bluefin Tuna and mako sharks—struck to such staggering scarcity that, in my own time, fishing for them has been transformed from celebration to transgression.
The stories from before my time speak of a sea that so swarmed with life no one now venturing forth can really imagine it. In my time, marlin and Albacore and big sharks were prizes—but some people once avoided them. I met an old gentleman who, as a youth, ignored all the marlin he saw, so as not to miss a chance at a Swordfish. (Now we see no marlin, either.) I met a man who in his prime was so intent on Bigeye Tuna that he’d reel in his lures and run from acres of Albacore. Nowadays, a few Albacore in eight hours of trolling, eighty miles from shore, is considered “a good trip.” A man formerly employed to spot Swordfish from a plane said his biggest problem was that sharks were so plentiful they made Swordfish hard to pick out. Now even the fish-spotting airplanes are gone. The stories of bygone plentitude read like fairy tales, yet they are the experiences of people still alive. Too soon they will pass into memory. And then the memories themselves will be forgotten. A few recovered species don’t compensate for the lost company of great beasts.