January 2023
Very early on Christmas morning, my friend and I went swimming at a local beach. I was doing my favourite pastime of snorkeling and, once again, noticed how few fish there were for this time of the year. There was a fisherman standing at the water’s edge with his line in the water. This concerned me because this is a marine sanctuary and there were signs up saying fishing is prohibited. As I was debating about how to tell him that he shouldn’t be fishing here, he called out to me saying his line was caught and could I release it. My interior argument intensified: do I help the fisherman, or the fish? Where does my ethical choice lie, and why? In the end I was moved to help the fisherman who was a stranger to me. This decision came down to the warm feelings that I have for my fellow human beings, even though I will fight rigorously for the health of the ocean.
I found the line, and released the hook and swam on. On returning to the shore and while my friend and I ate our Christmas breakfast, the fisherman came up and gave me two filleted fish. Again, my age old inner conflict was brought to the surface: I love eating seafood even though I am concerned for sea life. None of this is cut and dried for me. I delight in the smells and tastes of the ocean; I luxuriate in the deliciousness of it all even while earlier I might have been immersed in thalassic waters, but I’m worried by the way the ocean is being denuded. On this day, this Christmas day, I couldn’t say no to the gift of fish, given that the fish were already dead and it was a gift after all and contradictorily, I like eating fish.
And so, the conundrum of being human, this human, who eats fish and other seafood even while I relish swimming among marine life: how do I reconcile the contradictions? I don’t. I hold the two parts together in an uneasy holding pattern. Am I any different from other predators? Seems not. Should I be different? I don’t know. I am deeply connected to the conundrum of my existence in its many manifestations. I know I do not do well on a strictly vegetarian diet (something about my seafaring northern European genetic makeup) and I love the sea and all her inhabitants. I think of Sedna, the Inuit goddess of marine life and how she chose the sea over marrying a man she did not love and how she decides whether fisherman catch fish, or not, or whether fish eat us or not. She gives, but also takes away. She is fierce, when she needs to be, but loving and giving when she chooses it. In this way, she can be seen to explain something of the ineffable mysteries of connectedness with all living things.
If I have learned anything it is that my decisions have to come about by weighing up my choices. I have to make those choices on the basis of what is most beneficial for those involved as I see fit then, even while I can note that those choices are not clear cut, and not choices that are inflexible to other conditions. Deciding to free the fisherman’s line on Christmas day may not be the choice I make should the situation arise again. Next time it may be the marine sanctuary that is given the voice, my voice. The mystery of connectedness as I felt it that day was all about human warmth, but it need not be. Water, as a symbol, binds us all together with life all around us but it gives and takes away.
