Ed Clark: Surprise! Fish go where the food is

Surprise! Fish go where the food is

December 26, 2006

By Ed Clark

The Indians followed the buffalo and deer. Modern man follows the equivalent, his food source, commonly referred to as a job opportunity. Grass, which can't move, grows greener when you fertilize it.

Why, then, are we surprised when fish are found more abundant and bigger in nutritious water?

My question was prompted by Mike Thomas’ December 10, 2006, Orlando [Florida] Sentinel column ("We put nature into 'cells' and pave the rest" http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/columnists/orl-miket1006dec10,0,5422371.column?coll=orl-news-col). He had visited Farm 13, a water impoundment area in South Brevard and Indian River Counties that is known for lots of fish, and big ones. Mike was fishing for what he calls “crappies.” We Crackers just call them “specs.” Mike, in typical curmudgeonly fashion, found it deplorable that we had penned up “nature” in a “cell."

My response to him: “Mike, you got it right when you said the "cells" produce more fish than any natural lake. But you didn't ask why.

“The ‘cells’ are supposed to filter out the nutrients before they go into the river. The nutrients raise fish, lots of them. Just like your grass needs fertilizer, the lakes need runoff from the uplands.

“So you don't fish in the St. Johns river anymore; you fish in the "cells." That's where the fish are.

“’Clean up’ the rivers and the fish numbers decline.

“If you want to have some fun, tell this to your local Sierra Club president.”

The theory that you had to reduce nutrients in rivers and lakes was codified into deity in the Clean Water Act, which opined that U.S. waters should be “fishable and swimmable.” Anyone who knows anything about either knows that the more fishable water is, the less swimmable it is, and vice versa.

But that would have been okay, too, except that bureaucracies, being themselves organic, began to grow. Soon the “fishable and swimmable” mantra demanded conditions so precise that virtually no water bodies qualified. But forty gazillion federal, state, and local workers have jobs in perpetuity, looking for the perfect waters.

So, where do we find the fish? In the impoundments intended to catch the nutrients, a function that used to be served by the rivers themselves. Fish ain't dummies.

And where do we find swimmers? In their own little “cells” called swimming pools. Try raising fish in one of those.

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Source: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/letters/