The Natural Patriot

[Editor’s note: Few have employed the Spanish language so masterfully as Pablo Neruda.  I’ve often felt that an important incentive to improve my own rudimentary Spanish would be the ability to read and appreciate Neruda’s poetry in his native tongue.  For now, alas, I have to be satisfied with the translation of by Alastair Reid, who has been called “Neruda’s most talented and imaginitive English translator”.  This is from Neruda’s poetic autobiography, written in his elder years as he reminisced down his long and eventful life from his remote home on the coast of Chile.  As winter winds down here in Virginia, and I can already see in the woods the subtle wash of red maple buds, I’m waiting for the earth too.]

Oh tierra, esperame
(Oh, Earth, Wait for Me)

Pablo Neruda
from “Isla Negra“

Return me, oh sun,
to my country destiny,
rain of the ancient woods.
Bring me back its aroma, and the swords
falling from the sky,
the solitary peace of pasture and rock,
the damp at the river margins,
the smell of the larch tree,
the wind alive like a heart
beating in the crowded remoteness
of the towering araucaria.

Earth, give me back your pristine gifts,
towers of silence which rose from
the solemnity of their roots.
I want to go back to being what I haven’t been,
to learn to return from such depths
that among all natural things
I may live or not live.  I don’t mind
being one stone more, the dark stone,
the pure stone that the river bears away.

[The photo below shows Neruda’s house at Isla Negra, Chile]

 

        

As the evidence for ongoing climate change has grown incontrovertible, there is increasing urgency to the question of what these changes hold in store for us.  Some wondered why Al Gore and the IPCC should be awarded the Nobel peace prize for promoting climate science?  Is there really a connection?  One source of insight involves querying the past: what consequences have past climate changes had for human society? 

In a relatively new study (published in December 2007 — I’m a little behind the curve here), David Zhang and colleagues exploit new high-resolution paleo-temperature records to address this question. The paper assembles evidence from five to ten centuries of human history to show that climate variation drives changing food production, which among animals typically results in what we ecologists call “intraspecific competition”, that is, competition among members of the same species.  Among humans we call it war.

The Figure at left shows the northern hemisphere temperature variation (as anomalies from the long-term average, panel A), war frequency, and rate of change in human population from 1400 to approximately the beginning of the industrial revolution in 1900. The number of wars is shown for the northern hemisphere as a whole (bright green line, and right axis scale), Asia (pink), Europe (turquoise), and arid areas of the northern hemisphere (orange). Panel C shows number of wars worldwide as recorded by three different authors using different thresholds for defining war — as can be seen, the trends are roughly similar. Finally, panel D shows the 20-year population growth rate in Europe (turquoise), Asia (pink), and the northern hemisphere as a whole (blue), as well as the 50-year fatality index in the region (bright green). Cold phases of history are shaded in gray. The bright green curves correspond to the right axis. 

What to make of all this?  First, we can see that climate varied during this time between cool and warmer periods that lasted decades to a few centuries. More importantly, these cool and warm periods coincided with times of unrest and relative tranquility, respectively.  Considering the whole global data base, there is a strongly significant negative correlation between war and temperature, with temperature anomaly explaining 28% of the variation in war frequency.  Even more telling, this “rhythm of history” was roughly synchronous across the northern hemisphere. Since, during these centuries, China and Europe were still largely isolated from one another, the synchrony of these trends over such an area, comprising much of the northern half of the planet, is difficult to explain by any factor other than the clear signal of large-scale global climate. 

The relationships are even more pronounced in the finer-resolution record for China during the longer period from AD 1000 - 1900 (see figure below): here each of the cool periods (gray shading) saw a major spike in the number of wars.

 

What is the mechanism behind these patterns? The answer appears to be pretty simple, and readily predictable from basic principles of population ecology.  Climate cooling reduces agricultural production, mainly by shortening the growing season and reducing available land for cultivation. Because the political boundaries of states in these agrarian societies were less porous than they are today, there was little opportunity for mass migration during the resultant shortages of food (and, since the problems were regional, nowhere to go in any case).  So the four horsemen – death, famine, war, and pestilence — mounted up and rode in.             

The figure at right summarizes in diagrammatic form the pathways by which long-term climate variation influenced frequency of war and human population dynamics in China and Europe during preindustrial times (i.e. up to 1900). Solid lines indicate direct effects, and dotted lines indirect feedbacks. Thicker arrows indicates stronger correlations.  There are several inrerrelated impacts of climate change mediated by the interactions of humans with our food supply and with each other, but food supply is central. 

So, OK, this data comes from back when people rode horses and peasants grubbed for potatos all winter long and so forth.  Why should we care in the 21st century?  We have refigerators and grocery stores!  Besides, the climate now is warming, rather than cooling, so it should all be good, right?  The most general message for us today is that climate variation has profound impacts on the global ecosystem’s ability to provide vital services, which in turn have profound implications for human society and well-being.  Although a warming climate has been good for us in the past, and will surely be good for some people in some places in coming decades too, we are facing a much bigger and faster warming than the earth has seen in a very long time.  And one of the consequences is change in rainfall, which is an even more powerful regulator of agricultural productivity than temperature.  And when food runs low, conflict is inevitable, as we are seeing in Darfur.  Too little (crop)land to go around was evidently a key match to the flame in Rwanda during the 1990s also.

Scholars have long sought, with only partial success, to explain the conflicts that repeatedly plague civilization. The results of this paper indicate that human ecology is –- or was — forced to a surprising degree by the same basic environmental drivers and by similar, if more destructive, mechanisms of competition that regulate populations of other animals.

There is hopeful news too. We have learned a thing or two in the last millennium.  As the authors note:

“In the long run and at a global scale, technological and social development raised the population growth rate . . . reduced climate dependence of growth rate of population (after A.D. 1400), postponed the time of population decrease, and accelerated subsequent population recovery . . . The gradual increase in time delays for [northern hemisphere] population declines as we moved into the modern era may reflect that at least some social mechanismsmay becoming more effective over time at the macroscale.”

At the same time:

“these adaptive choices that are positive to humanity have not let the human race escape from social calamities such as population collapse caused by severe cooling at both the global and continental scales as shown in the history of the past millennium. For armed conflict, the positive social mechanisms could neither reduce the number of wars nor indefinitely postpone the times of war outbreak in any cooling periods . . . Although we have more robust social institutions at both international and national levels, and much more advanced social and technological developments at present, a much larger population size, higher standard of living, and more strictly controlled political boundaries will limit some adaptive choices to climate change. We hope that positive social mechanisms that are conducive to human adaptability will play an ever more effective role in meeting the challenges of the future.”

[Original source (open access): Zhang, D.D., P. Brecke, H.F. Lee, Y.-Q. He, and J. Zhang. 2007. Global climate change, war, and population decline in recent human history.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 104:19214-19219.]

[The painting shows the English victory over the French at the battle of Agincourt in 1415.] 

Top ten list - Excellent!

I am honored to have received the Excellent blog award, bestowed after a rigorous screening and review process, and accompanied by a handsome prize consisting of the right to display proudly a small jpeg image on my website (see below left, and in the sidebar).

The honor was bestowed by the venerable Coturnix (aka Bora Zivkovic) at “A blog around the clock“.  For those less familiar with the minutiae of blog history, Bora is a pioneer of science blogging.  His multifarious accomplishments include (1) serving as the Online Community Manager at PLoS-ONE (Public Library of Science), the rapidly growing open-access biology journal that encourages online commentary; (2) conceiving the idea for, and editing, the inaugural two issues of “The Open Laboratory: The Best Science Writing on Blogs“, which have been made available to Luddites in old-fashioned paper format, available here; (3) co-organizing the (first?) North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, which drew a large number of premier science bloggers , journalists, scientists, and educators from around North America, and which I will definitely want to attend next time around.    

An honor such as this comes with responsibility of course.  And in the characteristic pyramid-scheme modus operandi of the blogosphere, mine is to finger ten more blogs that I deem “excellent!”  I am of course delighted to do so.  Thus, in no particular order:

Growth is madness. It’s the economy, stupid.  And the people (yes, us) that keep cranking it upward.

Trinifar. More than food for thought - a feast for thought.

The other 95%.  Wide-ranging essays, musings, and news related to the bizarre and multifarious creatures that populate our earth.

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.  Amen brothers and sisters!

The Beagle Project.  A clever premise, which provides scaffolding for some interesting discussion.

Earth Forum.  More than just a blog — it’s an encyclopedia too!

Framing science.  And politics, etc.  The power of words, for good and ill.

Environmental economics.  WWA (Wonks with attitude). Actually makes economics interesting.

Children and Nature Network.  OK, I cheated — it’s not a blog.  But I love what these guys are about and what they’re doing.

Blogfish.  One of my early inspirations in blogging. A pioneer at the interface of marine science, conservation, and outreach.

There you have it.  Tag — you’re it!

 

[Editor’s note: This past weekend, driving home from the mountains of West Virginia, I saw groves of sycamores lining the river bottoms and along the creeks running down the hollows.  This poem, by one of the great American poets and communicants with nature, is a worthy tribute to one of the most magnificent trees in our American sylva (also captured beautifully in prose by Donald Culross Peattie — see here), and a telling metaphor for the struggle and triumph of our beleaguered world, and — dare I say it — our souls.]

The Sycamore
Wendell Berry

In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in
that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it
that is its death, though its living brims whitely
at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
Over all its scars has come the seamless white
of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history
healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection
in the warp and bending of its long growth.
It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate.
It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
In all the country there is no other like it.
I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
I see that it stands in its place, and feeds upon it,
and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.

[“Dry Creek Sycamore” painting by Michael Chesley Johnson.]

 

       

A question that may soon be answered for us, at least in the southeastern USA.

Now this may seem like a frivolous question (certainly not, you might argue, worthy of perverting Shakespeare), and in the grand scheme of things, yes, it is.  But bear with me.  And I know, also, that harping on climate change is like picking a scab. People get tired of hearing about it.  But there is a lesson here about real people and real jobs, in the very real near future.  Not just in Bangladesh and small island nations with the water creeping up on their homes.  Here in Virginia.

Take an example. As a recovering workaholic, I have in the last few years warmed up to regular vacations.  So this past long weekend, with the boy out of school Monday and Tuesday, we packed off to West Virginia for a couple of days of skiing. It was great fun and, given that I took up skiing a mere year ago in my mid-forties, I am thankful and relieved that no lives (or limbs) were lost.

But, I must say, the ambience was a bit of a disappointment.  Everywhere you look — apart from the banked up lanes of fake snow on the slopes — the Appalachian vistas were brown and muddy. This is the middle of February in what passes for high altitudes in eastern North America, on the Presidents’ Day weekend that is traditionally the biggest ski time of the year (so I’m told).  The first day out the temperatures were in the fifities.  On one ride up the chair lift, I sat with a young guy from western North Carolina. He had been coming to this site (Winterplace, West Virginia) for seven years and told me that this was the worst he’d seen it. Now that is not a scientific survey, admittedly.  But you gotta wonder: How much longer can this be kept up?  How much longer can this industry survive?

You won’t be surprised to hear that my guess is: not very long.

Climate projections for this neck o’ the woods generally predict both warmer temperatures and less precipitation.  I have to confess that, among the other reasons for taking my son skiiing last year, one was to leave him with this war story for his incredulous grandchildren: “When I was a lad, we went skiing in Virginia!” I strongly suspect that this will sound like a fantasy to them.

So enough already. We know the climate is changing.  What’s to be done?  This is a microcosm of the challenges we face in responding constructively to climate change. I ruminated about this in between hot chocolates and visions of my leg being twisted 180 degrees on a particularly terrifying downslope plunge. How will these already poverty-stricken communities adapt to a world where there is no longer enough snow to support the ski industry, and the only other major industry — coal — has packed its carpetbags and buggered off?  Where the latter has not blasted the tops off the mountains and left them for dead, there might be hope of developing whitewater rafting, or trout fishing, or desperately needed nature camps for kids, or conceivably some sort of eco-tourism.  But will that be enough?  I’d be interested to hear ideas about this.  

 

As global society begins to come to grips with the reality of climate change underway, and the James Inhofes of the world fade into obscurity or historical curiosity, the focus is turning slowly to the real work of figuring out how to deal with it. 

A major concern is sea level rise. More than half the American population (not to mention the millions in places like Bangladesh) lives in the coastal fringe that makes up only 17% of the country’s land area. In 2003, 23 of the 25 most densely populated U.S. counties were in the coastal zone.

Last week’s issue of Science features a special section on “Reimagining Cities” (including, among other things, a brief but fascinating piece on the prospects for “vertical farms” that grow crops within urbanized city limits).  One of the articles focuses on the special threats to coastal cities and populations stemming from climate change, starting with a central problem in human nature, exemplified by the psychological inability of New Orleans residents to give up even the flooded low-lying areas that are clearly already lost to Hurricane Katrina:

“Residents of New Orleans are not alone in their dogged determination to place themselves in harm’s way. According to a report last August from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), nearly half the U.S. population lived in counties that had declared flood disasters at least six times between 1980 and 2005, and 29% made their home in a county hit by at least one hurricane in that time. Large swaths of the western United States are at risk of wildfires, such as those that emptied parts of southern California last October. People are willing to gamble by building homes on earthquake fault lines, in landslide zones, and along tornado alleys. ‘Population trends are increasing the nation’s vulnerability to these risks,’ the GAO report noted dryly.”

Hope springs eternal, which is generally inspiring of course, but sometimes blinds us.  Urban planners have made little headway in convincing people or local governments that some of their policies place people and property in serious danger.  But economic forces (take note, skeptical conservatives) are beginning to respond, in the form of jittery insurance companies:

“Allstate Insurance let 120,000 policies lapse in Florida in 2006, after canceling 95,000 the year before. Another major insurer, State Farm, declined to renew 39,000 windstorm policies in 2006. In a sign of how dire the situation has become, the Citizens Property Insurance Corp., set up by Florida legislators in 2002 as the insurer of last resort, is now the state’s biggest property insurer. It has raised premiums by as much as 150% in the last 2 years. Rising premiums may price some residents out of hurricane zones”.

It will be fascinating, albeit unnerving, to see whether we as a society (or societies) can rise above our inherited emotional attachments and act on the rational knowledge we have to make the coming transition without catatsrophe.  Surely we’re smart and resourceful enough to do that . . .?

 

And now, as the Pythons say, for something completely different.  I realize that this is a bit peripheral to the mainsteam content of this blog but (as another famous person said), “I’m the decider”.

In our profession of science, probably like all others, there is perennial argument about what determines personal productivity, how you should measure it fairly, and so on. Various metrics have been devised, books have been written, probably blogs have been started about this.  People have examined the role of gender, birth order, institution, culture, astrological sign (OK, I made that up), etc. But so far, to my knowledge, nobody has examined scientifically one potentially key factor: beer.

I am happy to say that this frontier has now been demolished, and the juggernaut of science has barrelled through, with the efforts of a Czech evolutionary ecologist by the name of . . . Grim. The study was conducted in – you guessed it — Bohemia.  Dr. Grim surveyed all researchers studying the evolutionary and behavioral ecology of birds (this is his own discipline so presumably he had drained a few glasses himself with many of the subjects and felt comfortable probing into the minutiae of their drinking habits) in the Czech Republic who had published at least one paper in a peer-reviewed journal outside the Czech Republic in the last 20 years.  He then inquired (delicately, one presumes) how many glasses or bottles of beer they drank per week. Finally, he obtained data on year of birth to control for effects of age on drinking frequency.  The whole study was conducted twice, first in May 2002 and then again in 2006, with the same subjects where available.  

The Grim finding (I’m sorry — that was inexcusable) was that the number of papers published, the total number of citations received, and the average number of citations per paper all declined significantly with quantity of beer consumed (see the graph at left).  These results were consistent across both 2002 and 2006 data sets.  And get this, you Bohemians:

“Generally, inhabitants of Bohemia (western region of the Czech Republic) are known to drink more beer than people from Moravia (eastern region of the country). This difference was confirmed for my sample of researchers: researchers from Bohemia drank significantly more beer per capita per year (median 200.0 litres) than those from Moravia (median 37.5 litres). Therefore I predicted lower measures of publication output for the former in comparison to latter group of researchers . . . Indeed, researchers from Bohemia published fewer papers per year, were less cited per year, and showed lower citation rate per paper per year.” (I have omitted the arcane statistical details) 

To my mind, the message here is clear: ditch the beer and drink more wine!

[Original source: Tomáš Grim. 2008. A possible role of social activity to explain differences in publication output among ecologists.  Oikos. doi:10.1111/j.2008.0030-1299.16551.x]

 

199 years ago on this day, the 12th of February 1809, a child was born in the town of Shropshire in the West English midlands, and grew up to change the world. 

Charles Darwin spent a unique life studying nature, with the 19th century gentleman’s enviable leisure to pursue his subject with a concentration and material wherewithal never before possible, and which will certainly never be seen again.  He lived and worked, as it were, at the ephemeral gateway between an old world on which large swaths of territory remained in an essentially primeval state — some of which he was the first European to see during his seminal voyage aboard H.M.S. Beagle — and a new one beginning to yield to the industrial revolution spreading rapidly over its surface.

Darwin is of course most famous for the revolutionary idea that grew out of his uniquely comprehensive experience with the earth’s inhabitants: evolution by natural selection. The idea was revolutionary because, for the first time in history, it provided a mechanistic explanation for how living organisms develop the characteristics that suit them so astoundingly to their environment, an explanation based on simple and well understood physical and biological processes (indeed, so simple that his colleague and defender Thomas Henry Huxley observed after reading the Origin, “how extremely stupid not to have thought of that!”).  And because the explanation fit such a motley range of previously inexplicable observations.  One of the types of observations that were unified by his theory was the strange similarities in structure among wildly different kinds of animals, such as whales, mice, and bats — all of which share a basic anatomical structure.  The reason of course is that they are descendents of a common ancestor, whose parts have become modified, as Darwin would say, to different ends.  We are all, in a very literal sense, family. 

For the first time, the natural world made sense. 

In hiw own words, “As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.”

Of course, Darwin’s materialistic explanation of life’s diversity crashed headlong into the Biblical story of creation that had reigned since the beginning of time, with implications so fundamental and far-reaching that the anthropologist Ashley Montague aptly observed:”Next to the Bible, no work has been quite as influential, in virtually every aspect of human thought, as The Origin of Species.”  The reverberations continue to this day, as is clear from reading the newspaper in almost any given week. Darwin is arguably the superlative example in human history of the power of a scientific idea to change the world.

One of the wonderful things about Darwin is that his works are completely accessible to the moderately educated layperson.  Even with the slightly stilted prose of the mid-19th century, his writing has an engaging quality, and his account of the Beagle voyage in particular has real drama and some ripping yarns (told, of course, with Darwin’s characteristic modesty) — danger, despair, the thrill of discovery, you name it. You can begin with The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online (He even has this stuff in podcasts — who knew?) 

But what is perhaps less widely appreciated about Darwin, and what I admire most about him, is that he was a consummate naturalist.  After literally overturning the philosophical foundations of human thought with the Origin, Darwin did not go off to play golf or spend his life on a celebrity tour.  He spent decades in the tedious and methodical tasks of minute dissection and description of the world’s barnacles (yes, barnacles), eventually producing a masterwork that still stands as the seminal, classic foundation of knowledge on this group of animals. Clearly, it was a labor of love.

So let’s raise a glass, virtually speaking, to the gentle naturalist who figured it all out.

Fresh air, wildlife, purple mountains’ majesty.  This country’s national parks have long been considered a jewel in the crown of American democracy – all accessible to anyone for a nominal charge or even for free.  And ever since ol’ Teddy Roosevelt established the park system, Americans and people from all over the world have flocked to them for inspiration, recreation, and escape.

Until recently, that is.  After half a century of steady increase, from the beginning of regular record-keeping in 1939 through the late 1980s, visits to National Parks increased steadily.  But then, something curious happened: visits began a decline, equally steady, that continues to this day.  What happened?

Two years ago, Oliver Pergams and Patricia Zaradic, who first documented this pattern, stirred up a lot of  attention and controversy by showing that the rise of electronic entertainment (time spent on the internet, playing video games, and
watching movies) was a remarkably strong statistical predictor of this downward trend in park visits.  They concluded that:

“we may be seeing evidence of a fundamental shift away from people’s appreciation of nature (biophilia, Wilson 1984) to ‘videophilia’, which we here define as ‘the new human tendency to focus on sedentary activities involving electronic media’.  Such a shift would not bode well for the future of biodiversiy conservation.” 

Indeed. That study rightly generated major attention and controversy.  Commentators suggested several possible reasons why the national park visitation data might not be representative of nature recreation as a whole, incluing declining market share of parks relative to other outdoor lands, decaying park infrastructure and staffing declines, etc.

Now comes a new paper from Pergams and Zaradic that tackles these criticisms with a wide variety of new data sources.  Building on their initial data from American national parks, they examined data from national forests, state parks, and land owned by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), as well as visits to national parks in Japan and Spain.   The quality of data varies among these sources, but all show downturns in recent decades.  As do the trends for fishing and duck hunting licenses.  In summary, “most reliable long-term per capita visitation measures of nature recreation peaked between 1981 and 1991, are declining at approximately -1.2% per year, and total to date -18% to -25%.”     

The graph below shows the time trends for visits to American national parks (NPV), national forests (NFV), state parks (SPV), BLM lands (BLMV) and foreign parks (JapanNPV, SpainNPV).

This news is not just a sad reflection on the declining state of American life, although it is assuredly that.  It is more fundamentally disturbing for several reasons.  Scientific studies show that direct experience with nature in childhood is the best predictor of environmental awareness and commitment to conservation among adults.  And, as Nature Conservancy scientist Peter Kareiva notes in a commentary on the Pergams and Zaradic paper, “A poor understanding of basic natural history is sure to undermine our ability to solve environmental probems.”  Perhaps this growing disconnect from nature is one reason that, although 80% of American say they favor stronger standards of environmental protection, they consistently rank the environment in last place after the economy, health care, Iraq, social security, taxes, and even moral values.  Now that’s going to undermine our ability solve environmental problems. 

This is a tough problem — at the moment I sit here writing this, hunched over the computer, my 10-year-old son models my behavior by hunching over his own computer, playing with animals in Zoo Tycoon II rather than hunting frogs and bugs and what not in the backyard (I do admit to some relief that he is playing with animals, even virtual ones, rather than the more popular activities of destroying virtual planets, gunning down virtual cops, or committing virtual grand theft auto).  What’s a parent to do?

It’s time to mobilize.  The Children and Nature Network (C&NN), founded and inspired by Richard Louv’s revolutionary book, Last Child in the Woods (see also here), has emerged as a growing national alliance of people dedicated to healing our broken bond with nature.  The network has spawned local chapters all over the country. 

We need one here in southeastern Virginia (and in your community, wherever you are)!  C&NN has just released a Community Action Guide (PDF here) to get one off the ground.  It’s well worth reading.

Let’s get started!  Who’s ready to commit?

[Original source: Pergams, R.W. and P.A. Zaradic. 2008. Evidence for a fundamental and pervasive shift away from nature-based recreation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the USA. 4 February 4 2008, 10.1073/pnas.0709893105  (download PDF here)]

[Note: Few poets, or others for that matter, have captured the essence of our life in the world as Mary Oliver has.  How will we live in harmony with the earth? There are no easy answers.]

The fish
Mary Oliver

The first fish
I ever caught
would not lie down
quiet in the pail
but flailed and sucked
at the burning
amazement of the air
and died
in the slow pouring off
of rainbows. Later
I opened his body and separated
the flesh from the bones
and ate him: I am the fish, the fish
glitters in me; we are
risen, tangled together, certain to fall
back to the sea. Out of pain,
and pain, and more pain
we feed this feverish plot, we are noursihed
by the mystery.

[Fish print by Lori Hatch]