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Saluting those who improve our waters
If I were a fish, would I be happy in Ohio in 2016?
I know the question is ridiculous. Fish have no capacity to be happy or sad. That’s what we’re told.
A fish hatched in Ohio has very few options when it comes to living quarters. They cannot pack up and move if the neighborhood deteriorates. For all intents and purposes, a fish that hatches in Ohio will likely live out its life in Ohio.
But would it like its Ohio lake or river? Silly question, yes, but I wonder nonetheless.
The question popped into my head after I read the headline on a news release from Ohio Department of Natural Resources about an upcoming Ohio Wildlife Diversity Conference. The headline was “Exploring the Challenges Ohio’s Wildlife Faces in the World Today.”
The headline made me think. Challenges? For a bass or a walleye or a crappie, what challenges might lurk in Mosquito or Berlin or West Branch?
Heat, cold, floods, muddy water, low water, pollution and other environmental factors would be challenges, for sure. As would predators, habitat degradation, food sources and more. Toss in fishing pressure and things get even more dicey.
Some days, I guess, would be better than others.
We think we’re having a bad day when we must deal with a grumpy co-worker and balky Internet and then go home to discover the last beer in the refrigerator disappeared yesterday.
Oh, wow.
If I were a bass or a walleye or a crappie at Mosquito, my day might have a few more bumps.
Sleep? Forget about that. I’d have been up all night prowling for a shad. Overhead, the great blue herons and ospreys are never to be taken for granted.
Right in my own neighborhood, lurking in the next stalk of coontail, I might encounter a northern pike longer than LeBron’s arms with a mouthful of teeth and an insatiable appetite. It would love nothing more than to eat me.
As the sun climbs to its noontime zenith, the water around me warms to life-sucking temperatures, but in a few months it will so cold I go into a virtually suspended existence.
A nasty storm may create inconveniences for land animals, but the gushers of runoff would rile my waters to such a turbid state that I can’t see my fin in front of my face.
Sooner or later a mysterious chemical might drain into my lake, and try as we might, we fish don’t have the brainpower to figure out how to rid our systems of pollution that can destroy our gills and our skin and disrupt our metabolism and our food.
Oh, wow.
While we have no way to fully comprehend what Ohio’s fish must endure and cannot reasonably equate the human experiences to the piscatorial perspective, I think we can safely assume the challenges are considerable.
Fish, if they could think, would be heartened to know that a growing number of people do want to understand the challenges facing wildlife today.
If I were a fish, I would raise a fin in salute to those who will work to make tomorrow’s waters better.