Elegy for Catfish

A walk on the beach in Florida can take on a multitude of shapes. Depending upon such influences as sun, wind, rain, tides and season, the fundamental trio of ocean, beach and sky shifts daily through a cycle of patterns ongoing in their variety. Just when you think you’ve recognized something predictable in the daily scene, a twist in the weather brings on a sudden surprise in the tenor of that walk on the beach.

This week the twist is cold ocean water and its effect upon catfish and snook. In daily walks the past few days I have seen an increasing number of catfish washed up on the beach, some newly dead, others half picked over by scavenging birds. Not nearly as many, but the same is true of snook. My initial thought was that the phenomenon is related to the temperature of the ocean. A call to the New Smyrna Beach Wildlife Services confirmed that guess. According to the person I spoke to, from Flagler Beach south to Vero Beach, a stretch of about 100 miles, the ocean temperature this week is low enough to cause shock among catfish and snook. The shock disables the fish as far as swimming goes, leaving them helpless against tide and surf. Thrown onto the beach they are stranded at the surf line, quickly becoming a fresh dish at the grand and sandy beach buffet for birds. Onshore temperatures have been higher the past three days and birds are more numerous now. Their numbers though are still too few to handle the large influx of beached fish. For the time being, what you see are many fish only half-eaten. But this environment, whatever the season is supremely efficient in processing the non-living, and the passage of several days will find a beach cleansed of these partially eaten carcasses.

As for us two-legged creatures who frequent the beach, temperatures are back in the 60s and 70s, and the walking is optimum, if a little ghoulish with the sight of so many eyeless fish heads.

Cold Sculpture

Not long after climbing out of bed this morning a new sound muscles its way through the walls. It is the grind and chomp of big machines chewing up the parking lot 500 feet away. There is promise of a new parking lot by the end of this week, a Christmas gift of shiny new surfaces with newly painted lines and numbers. Cold work for the Santas riding those machines, as temperatures continue to slide around between 25 and 39° here on the edge of the water. Cold, though no one can say it’s not beautiful. The view from this hand hammered work table under my elbows is scintillating, as it normally is when the morning light is strong and clear.

But the cold. Following my recently changed custom of exercising later, about an hour after lunch I spend some time walking on the beach. No other person in sight, north or south for a distance of about five miles. Even the bird life is sparse and over the course of miles, the most seen are maybe ten or twelve birds. By now the unexpected has become what could be called the ‘expected unexpected,’ a matter of almost knowing that something along the sandy path will surprise me in an unforeseeable or unpredictable way.

Not long into my windy ramble I come across a bird in the familiar pose of sleep or rest, legs tucked under, breast down on the sand. I think it odd that the bird doesn’t spring up and either fly or scamper away at my approach. But then, how does a frozen bird fly away? Soon after I begin to notice catfish, first one, then another and soon a dozen dead or dying at surf’s edge. A thought comes that maybe for this particular fish the coldness of the water triggered some ancient instinct, telling them to seek warmer, shallower water warmed by sunlight. That might lead to the fish being washed onto dry sand by the surf. Whatever the cause, I notice over a dozen catfish washed up, and only one or two of those carcasses providing a meal for the scant birds on this cold day. What would normally be a feast for the gathered birds is now too much for those remaining.

New to me is the tiredness that comes sooner from walking any distance on a cold beach. The sweater, jacket and hood are fine, but the unceasing wind is a ball and chain on the legs. The press against such wind is wearing, but all around me the wind creates what looks like beautiful bas reliefs in the sand, shapes that resemble powdery temporary sculptures shifting and reshaping themselves by the hour. They are arresting designs perhaps special to this time of year when the wind gusts and swirls in a singular way. Though cold and beginning to drag, the sight of these natural designs adds something extra to this December walk.