I have stayed for two weeks on the coast in a coastal town. Tomorrow I am going home to my hometown. But living so close to the coast you see what happens on the seas. And living betwixt local gangs smuggling abalone, you are in the midst of the ocean being overfished. You can actually see the effects of these disasters.
But without going too deep into this sad and depressing topic, in this post, I share with you a seagull (Hartlaub's gull (Chroicocephalus hartlaubii)) trying to fish some of the small fish on the coastline. It makes you think about things a bit.
The small fish swim in vast numbers in shallow water. Some of them are bigger than others (see the photograph in this post below of the fish in my girlfriend's hand). The seagull tried to catch some of the bigger fish.
It caught the bigger fish! Below the seagull, you can see the smaller fish swimming. Sadly, the gull dropped the fish. So lucky fish I guess?
(I could not resist to sharing some gull butt!)
Are there enough fish for us all in the ocean? I know that a lot of people depend on the fishing industry either job-wise or food-wise. But overfishing is threatening so many of these jobs and food sources. However, the natural disaster looming over us when the fish sources are completely depleted is much bigger.
There might not be enough fish for us all in the ocean.
But how egotistic or human-centric are we to think that all the fish in the ocean is ours?
Let us not go down this rabbit hole again.
We humans can do so much good and so much bad. In our hands lies the future of not just our lives but those of others. We might think that nature will win, but we have the ability to destroy even nature because we think we stand outside of nature.
I am home in less than 24 hours. I will then return to my previous routine a bit more. I will be in my garden again as well. But for now, I hope you enjoyed this post and the photographs. All of them are my own taken with my Nikon D300 and Tamron zoom lens. The musings are also my own. Happy birding, and stay safe.
