A Sad Article

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(05/06/2001) Minneapolis-St.Paul Star-Tribune: In

Tunisia, the lesson of the fish.

 

From the balcony of my room on the coast of Tunisia, I

squinted into the glare of morning sun on water.

Offshore, I could see an open fishing boat and men

putting nets into the blue Mediterranean.

 

Two hours later, they were still there, but the boat

had been pulled up on the sand, and the men were on

the beach, straining to pull the nets out. I went down

to the beach to see what they'd caught. But what had

been an interesting ritual from a distance became, up

close, a sad lesson in the ways of the modern world

and a portent of what may come.

 

The fishermen had used two nets: an outer one with

coarse mesh and an inner one, with fine mesh, to make

sure nothing escaped.

 

Nothing had.

 

The most noticeable victim was a young sea turtle,

about 2 feet long, lying on its back in the sand. An

air-breather, it had become entangled in the nets and

drowned. Now it lay motionless, its eyes growing

opaque, flies already buzzing around it. The fishermen

had abandoned it; they were busy farther down the

beach. So it would not be taken to market, would not

be eaten. It had died for nothing. An endangered

species, wasted.

 

The black mesh of the nets was accumulating around the

fishermen's feet like mourning veils. Judging by where

they'd started, there had been at least a quarter-mile

of netting in the sea. As the men pulled and the

circle of nets shrank, I kept watching the water,

expecting to see the shrinking surface boil with fish.

 

It never happened. The men kept dragging the nets in

and in, until all the netting lay in the inch-deep

shallows at the wave line. There were so few fish that

it only took one man to pluck them from the mesh. He

dropped them into a couple of plastic bins; together,

they made barely a bushel of fish.

 

I was shocked. So many men, so much work, so many

hours - and not enough fish for their families to eat,

let alone enough to sell in town.

 

Then I noticed a tiny flicker of silver in the netting

that the men had finished with. I walked over, looked

down, reached down. What was flickering was an infant

fish about 4 inches long - too small to be sold, too

big to get through the netting. It looked like a

miniature swordfish, with round unblinking eyes and a

long, sharp snout. It was caught by the gills. I

started working the netting over its back; when I got

it free, it lay in my hand like a living knife blade.

I tossed it gently toward the water and watched it

slice into the wavelets and disappear.

 

The next one I found was smaller, only a couple of

inches long, its bill like a sewing needle. I tossed

it into the water, too. In all, I saved six creatures

that morning - five fish and one gray, wiggly prawn.

Even as I was doing it, the effort seemed silly - as

pointless, as hopeless as the fishermen's. But it was

all I could think of doing.

 

We are eating the world, I thought as I did it. Our

numbers are growing, and we will keep on eating. We

will eat until the oceans are empty and the forests

are desert. We will gnaw at the world until it is as

dead as that sea turtle.

 

And then we will die, too. On that bleak morning,

under the hot Tunisian sun, I thought that was exactly

what we deserved.

 

A local man, who had come down to the beach about when

I did, walked over to me while I was saving fish. What

kind of fish are these? I asked him, holding out my

latest rescue.

 

" Sardines, " he said.

 

" They're catching the babies, " I said. " If they keep

taking the babies, there won't be any more big ones.

Then there won't be anymore fish. "

 

" Yes, " he said, sounding sad.

 

I worked the last baby fish through the netting and

threw it back. " I'm sorry, " I whispered to it, as it

swam away.

 

 

 

 

 

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