The Deafening Silence Surrounding Fish Kills

By Chris Veritas

23 million Salmon died this year in Chile due to Algae blooms.

4.5 Million fish of all stripes died in a river in Mexico, and nobody knows why.

220,000 pounds of fish died recently in China. 220,000 pounds. Let that sink in.

And here in NC, there is an enormous problem at the Neuse River. According to local sources, as many as One Billion fish have died in the “Noose”. That may seem outrageous, but 6.5. million fish washed ashore this year in a single day.

Mass fish deaths are being reported all over the world. Really, there are too many accounts to mention.  But fish are not the only animals dying. More than a million birds and mammals die yearly from eating plastic. And noise pollution in the oceans is causing whales and dolphins to essentially go crazy, beaching themselves to get away from our machines.

Here in America, where fish kills seem to happen in the greatest numbers, the noise level surrounding bombastic campaigns rattles every ear drum; imprecations leveled at Syria saturate the air-waves; and the debate over bathrooms echoes ad nauseam. Meanwhile, a deafening silence surrounds the mass death of aquatic life.

Granted, there is some internet coverage provided by main stream news sources. But that’s about as far as it goes.

If Television covers the phenomena, it will be local coverage, with citizens expressing outrage, and a local anchor nodding with studied compassion. As everyone knows, a story has to make the leap to national Television to be taken seriously by the masses. Until it appears digitally, it’s like it hasn’t happened..

The majority of fish kill coverage comes from alternative media sources. But you already knew that! That the main stream would neglect to cover fish kills is all the more striking, considering a chief element of the food supply is at risk. Not to mention the drinking water. But as far as water is concerned, we’ve been putting up with aquatic pollution for decades. It was only a matter of time before the life went out of the water. What did we think was going to happen, that fairies were going to rescue us? The media’s momentary outrage notwithstanding, why haven’t we as human beings demanded change? Why do we put up with so much garbage?

Speculation runs rampant as to the cause of the kills. That is, speculation runs rampant among the small number of informed individuals, who discuss it in internet articles, conversations at cafes, or bicker about it in the comments sections of articles (you know who you are, comment assassins).

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In the oceans, the top candidates for fatalities are radiation from Fukushima, rubbish and runoff (did you hear, the ocean is now an enormous trash compactor?). In lakes and rivers, the answer (more than likely) is also pollution.

I suppose if media started covering fish kills, since we live in an egalitarian society, they’d also have to cover the poison giant that handles a large portion of the food supply; the animals (destined for food consumption) that live in squalor, pumped up with antibiotics; the vegetables reared in spray; and then on top of that, report what’s being done to the fish. But with Trump and Cruz going at it like true champions, what’s a few hundred million fish in the grand scheme of things?

As any fisherman will tell you, it’s getting harder and harder to catch fish these days. Eventually we might just outfish the planet. Then it would be the land animals that disappear. And what then? Federal Reserve Notes dipped in hot sauce?

The extent to which we’ve poisoned the world really is astonishing. But my guess is you won’t hear about it in the news till the last fish is dead. Then CNN will run endless retrospectives on the fish kill phenomena, as if they didn’t know it was happening the whole time.

In my last satire I joked about Millennials thinking they could reTweet the fish population. But unlike paper money, digitized Hollywood movies, meat glue and pink slime, real biological life cannot be created ex nihilo by human beings.

So far this article has focused on the utility of aquatic animals. But they are not just food. They’re the life of the oceans and fresh water courses. Can you imagine the world without them? The sky without birds? The fields without animals? This could be the future, if we’re not careful. As in The Simpons, we can create holograms of the last tree, the last whale, and the last human being, or we can wise up and start to value life more than money.

Until that time, please don’t tell me the world is progressing, or you might just find yourself sleeping with the fishes.

Chris Veritas is the author of Wisdom Trilogy and New Poems. You can purchase it here, and read his op-eds here.

Image: Pixabay

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This piece was featured on Natural Blaze as a contribution from the author. Chris Veritas writes informative pieces like this at Veritas Gazette, at his blog, and humorous satire news at Some Cry Wolf.