Slashdot Mirror
Black Water
Romancer writes "The Naples Daily News has an article about an environmental anomaly discovered by local fisherman: "They've dubbed it black water, and they're demanding that local, state and national government agencies find out what's causing it." With the Ice shelf falling and now this, solutions are helping but might be a bit late."
Blackness crawling up from ocean deeps. Strange plagues that get dredged up from the ocean. Nothing goes away, even if we forget it. We may laugh a good joke of cthonic horros, but all folklore has it's basis in some piece of the world.
"That which is dead may eternal lie, and in strange aeons even death may die"
-shpoffo
Personally I find it hard to sympathize with *any* commercial fishermen, they resent responsible harvesting practices, they are ambivalent towards corporate pollution which second to their own over fishing is mostly responsible to the decline of fisheries. When they can no longer make money they apparently are incapable of changing careers, insisting their occupation is some sort of romantic historical thing.If they really were interested in the long term vitality of their industry, they'd take a lot more interest in the big picture and stop being so myopic and short sighted.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
t.
I used to live in Newfoundland, where the fishing industry is a major source of the economy. Fishing like that is a lifestyle, handed down from generation to generation. You can't just say 'Oh, something happened, there are no fish, go find a real job'. Besides that, the cause here isn't overfishing, it's something else (or there would have been a gradual decrease in the fish stocks, etc.)
In St. John's harbour is something called 'The Bubble'. It's this small area of pitch black murky water, on which seagulls can land, where all of the unfiltered sewage from St. John's is poured into the ocean. If you fall into the harbour around that area, you could easily die from all of the disease that lives in that square metre. But this is something isolated, as opposed to the large patches of black water, which suggests that some one has been continually dumping something very toxic into the ocean at certain points.
Fishermen are generally the most knowledgable about the ocean. If they didn't see the black water coming, then something drastic and serious just happened, and that's a cause for huge concern. When an entire fish stock dissipears all at once, that's a cause for an immediate investigation, and notification of the Dept of Public Health. Something serious is obviously going on down there, that (rightfully) scares the crap out of any one with any knowledge about fishing or marine life.
Have you thought about what you're looking at today?
Great. So we hear that fishermen are reporting an insurgence of flesh eating bacteria and none of the "smart" doctors who have treated it have had the intelligence or forsight to actually culture a sample of the organism. They just take a guess at what they think it might be and administer a stiff antibacterial. What f***ing morons.
Then we hear that there is a dead zone of some 400 square miles where the water is sort of black all the way to the bottom and nothing is living in it. The few fish that wander into the "black water" go crazy to get out it. And no scientists have been dispatched to take water samples and find out what the hell is going on. Are they also stupid or are they under orders to not find out what is the cause? Or perhaps working on a "five dollar a day" budget has crippled them and their ability to do anything.
Oh no, nothing wrong here. Just some old wives tales and pirate yarns. It must be that those fisherman are just drinking too much slcohol. Of course, everyone knows that if you get drunk alot and then go hang out on boats for long periods of time, you automically contract a case of flesh eating bacteria. Ask any yachter or sailing man. Everything is just great in the president's brother's state.
I tell ya, if I had any say in it, there be a team of marine biologist and chemists descending on the Gulf of Mexico like a swarm of locusts. This is nuts. And to hear that there is also a huge dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi River is really insane. A river mouth traditionally was a place that would be teaming with life due to nutrients and food being washed down to the sea but here in the good old McUSA it's just business as usual.
Yes, how much longer until one of those near misses registers a direct hit. I'm hoping the cosmic debris might raise IQs everywhere while killing off major quantities of stupid people and politicians.
When the ice melted, the seas rose. - Morgan Llewellyn, The Elementals
:::Horrendous Experiences Make Amusing Anecdotes:::