Soles

​I was going through my keepsakes and came across this from the newspaper.  I love it.  It was written by a Shane Rodgers and called “Little Soles Gone To A Better Plaice.”  It was written when explosives were used to free a Malaysian freighter caught on the Barrier Reef.  It is close to 700 words, but I have not edited it.
For Marvin the stately bream, life had been kind – enriched by the promise of adventure and the serendipity of an ocean paradise brimming with nourishment for the stomach and the soul.
His was a life worth living.  Marvin (probably not his real name) was a fish of substance, two fillets less ordinary.
But there was trouble brewing in fish country.  Marvin’s life was about to be cut short in a brutal display of raw power that would fracture his dreams and deconstruct his destiny.
In the rush of backslapping following the successful freeing of a Malaysian freighter which had jumped the kerb on the Great Barrier Reef because the channel was only 9km wide, the awful fate of 125 fish was almost overlooked.
Thankfully, the diligence of a national newspaper revealed the full extent of the tragedy.  It named those who had lost their lives in explosions among the coral, undoubtedly read over the phone slowly and with feeling, with full honour roll treatment.
The list read: four yellow sweetlip, one black spinefoot, five red line trigger fish, 110 red bellied fuseliers, one coral trout, one humpheaded batfish, two black sargeant majors (I’m assuming these are fish) and, of course, the single stately bream we have come to know as Marvin.
Rumours have been circulating that there was a mysterious 126th victim which could not be identified.  It will be buried in the tomb of the unknown fish.
What makes this loss even more tragic is that certain wildlife preservation types had the poor taste to cast aspersions on their character while they were freshly floating on top of the bucket.
“There were no endangered species or marine mammals” we were assured.  Great.  Try telling that to the family of the grieving red-bellied fuseliers.  And is the life of one humpheaded batfish really so insignificant?  Even the batfish has a mother.  Or at least had one before she was caught by mistake in a trawler net or eaten by a white pointer.
“A smaller blast was set off first to scare off as many fish as possible” they said.  Terrific.  Did anyone tell the fish that was what it was for?
I mean, can we really know that a fish will hear a loud noise, see great clumps of rocks and marine paraphernalia flailing all over the place and automatically assume it is a warning to leave the area?
They probably thought it was just a drill.
A more humane approach would have been to send in a crack group of divers to say “shoo, shoo”.  Fish would understand then that they had to go.  “Shoo” is a well established multispecies language.
The other possibility, which is almost too awful to contemplate, is that those caught in the explosion were the slowest and weakest of their group.
What if they had heeded the warnings, took flight but got caught up in the madness of the moment, with freedom tantalisingly close but still unachievable?
The batfish, the spinefoot and the coral trout died alone.  Perhaps others in their group turned back as they blubbered sadly: “save yourself, I’m a goner.”
And one of the black sergeant majors, lean and strong, probably refused to leave his companion.  They took the full force of the blast together.
It is well known in fish circles that red-bellied fuseliers are as thick as a short plank.  They probably still haven’t noticed that they are dead.
As for Marvin, I like to picture a proud fish standing in defiance in his water home while the world disintegrated around him.  Perhaps at the moment when he became conscious of his mortality, he had a vision of a better place where fish can fulfil their dinner-plate destinies with honour and certainty and where the world  heeds the value of one small marine hero who stood up to be counted.