Relevant whale fact I learned recently: Whales only sleep with one hemisphere of their brain at a time because they need to be conscious enough to come up to the surface to breathe.
I had forgotten the evolutionary return to the waters, which came first, before the Breath. A-lo-ha. With the Breath of the Creator.
You brought to mind two things:
1. Anadromy
I work with an endangered species of anadromous fish that suffers with both habitat loss and a branding issue. It’s a rainbow trout, sharing a name with those pellet eating trout pond dwellers that were a common but only occasionally visited recreational landscape in my boomer/gen x cusp lifetime, like bowling alleys.
But our fish, I say with a localist conviction, are also a Steelhead. But ours are Southern Steelhead, and superior in every way than the more well known northern genetic strain. Locals rule!
In all seriousness and getting back to your water to land to water cycle, our SoSteelhead evolved from freshwater, but then had to go to the Deep (and salt) waters when the freshwater in their Baja/meso California biome became land, as it does in our variable climate and has done so for millennia. We don’t know if this was more Jonah or Moses like but it’s a big deal. They live land and two waters in a single lifetime, at least as a community- many stay to keep the home waters fertile, and perhaps die there. Hobbit fish. But a variable percentage are “selected”, and smolt. Not a great word for a glorious departure into the western seas where they grow and assume the elf like silver light of the sea. The warrior fish. They tumble out through apertures in the breaking waves that exist for only days each year. We don’t know what they do out there, in the Deep.
But whatever they do out there, our fish remained Bioregional, and only a few got north of point conception. Or perhaps they rode the southern tip of the slice of Baja that rotated 90 degrees north and became the transvers ranges so their west became north. There they found abundant and reliable and cooler freshwater. They became hyper local, and most all the hobbits made the food fest of the sea a part of their lifecycle. They partitioned their sea into a mere extension of their reliable watery Shire, comfortable in their second home as much as their home ground. They grew fat and large.
But then we humans, wanting reliable freshwater so we could grow fat too, built dams. And so with less home there are less fish and NoSteelhead can’t seem to move to the next town over. And now their isolated and dammed freshwater is warming. Damned indeed, so our SoSteelhead need to move north. NoSteelhead can’t evolve genetically in the blink of time that has severed the majority of their habitat and while climate wobbling increases. Our fish have a 10 degree head start on them and so can carry on in Middle Coast.
Meanwhile back in the south, the more temperature tolerant and exploratory SoSteelhead are hanging on though the last remaining Santa Monica bay had to be rescued after the latest LA conflagration.
When we remove a barrier for them and restore new water, invariably it seems, at least two of the warrior fish emerge from the Deep to occupy new land. They may represent a large percentage of the remaking ocean population. We don’t know and they don’t tell. But Somehow they read the signature of new water and pioneer. They have always done this. They will need to be the northern fish one day, likely soon. “Need” is our word not theirs.
2. Fratricide, Cain and Abel.
Instagram before I departed led me to whales and dolphins, and finally to whales hunting, menacing, and annihilating their smaller sea-land-sea evolutionary companions. I am a hunter and a naturalist who has “cleaned” (that is, gutted) many different species. I don’t remember being taught how to do this and butchery is somehow innate. But I can’t bear to watch “Orca” kill “Flipper”. When I was a kid the last of that dolphin-starred show was airing, and the IMDB credit for the villain would have been “Killer Whale”. Instagram might succeed in bringing back that name in an artist-formerly-known-as-Prince kind of way. Symbol is no substitute for substance. (See what happened there, my converting friend?!)
I have a Hawaiian friend with both a special Devotion to Mary, and a direct “mystic” communication with the whales. She has “Incorporated” both. The Whales have told her that they sing the next that holds Life together. As we e seen in the Right Whale decimation, they tell her we are singing the song of death. This I take not emotionally or as an excuse for sel-righteous pride driven activism, but as seriously as Gospel truth. In her visits to the whales, she is carried over the Deep within the wind on the waters. A-lo-ha.
Relevant whale fact I learned recently: Whales only sleep with one hemisphere of their brain at a time because they need to be conscious enough to come up to the surface to breathe.
What you described is why I call my Substack Polymathic Being. Jack of all trades and master of none but most often better than a master of one.
It gives me the freedom to explore and grow.
https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/embracing-my-white-belt
Masters of the deep, 10 minutes as a time.
I had forgotten the evolutionary return to the waters, which came first, before the Breath. A-lo-ha. With the Breath of the Creator.
You brought to mind two things:
1. Anadromy
I work with an endangered species of anadromous fish that suffers with both habitat loss and a branding issue. It’s a rainbow trout, sharing a name with those pellet eating trout pond dwellers that were a common but only occasionally visited recreational landscape in my boomer/gen x cusp lifetime, like bowling alleys.
But our fish, I say with a localist conviction, are also a Steelhead. But ours are Southern Steelhead, and superior in every way than the more well known northern genetic strain. Locals rule!
In all seriousness and getting back to your water to land to water cycle, our SoSteelhead evolved from freshwater, but then had to go to the Deep (and salt) waters when the freshwater in their Baja/meso California biome became land, as it does in our variable climate and has done so for millennia. We don’t know if this was more Jonah or Moses like but it’s a big deal. They live land and two waters in a single lifetime, at least as a community- many stay to keep the home waters fertile, and perhaps die there. Hobbit fish. But a variable percentage are “selected”, and smolt. Not a great word for a glorious departure into the western seas where they grow and assume the elf like silver light of the sea. The warrior fish. They tumble out through apertures in the breaking waves that exist for only days each year. We don’t know what they do out there, in the Deep.
But whatever they do out there, our fish remained Bioregional, and only a few got north of point conception. Or perhaps they rode the southern tip of the slice of Baja that rotated 90 degrees north and became the transvers ranges so their west became north. There they found abundant and reliable and cooler freshwater. They became hyper local, and most all the hobbits made the food fest of the sea a part of their lifecycle. They partitioned their sea into a mere extension of their reliable watery Shire, comfortable in their second home as much as their home ground. They grew fat and large.
But then we humans, wanting reliable freshwater so we could grow fat too, built dams. And so with less home there are less fish and NoSteelhead can’t seem to move to the next town over. And now their isolated and dammed freshwater is warming. Damned indeed, so our SoSteelhead need to move north. NoSteelhead can’t evolve genetically in the blink of time that has severed the majority of their habitat and while climate wobbling increases. Our fish have a 10 degree head start on them and so can carry on in Middle Coast.
Meanwhile back in the south, the more temperature tolerant and exploratory SoSteelhead are hanging on though the last remaining Santa Monica bay had to be rescued after the latest LA conflagration.
When we remove a barrier for them and restore new water, invariably it seems, at least two of the warrior fish emerge from the Deep to occupy new land. They may represent a large percentage of the remaking ocean population. We don’t know and they don’t tell. But Somehow they read the signature of new water and pioneer. They have always done this. They will need to be the northern fish one day, likely soon. “Need” is our word not theirs.
2. Fratricide, Cain and Abel.
Instagram before I departed led me to whales and dolphins, and finally to whales hunting, menacing, and annihilating their smaller sea-land-sea evolutionary companions. I am a hunter and a naturalist who has “cleaned” (that is, gutted) many different species. I don’t remember being taught how to do this and butchery is somehow innate. But I can’t bear to watch “Orca” kill “Flipper”. When I was a kid the last of that dolphin-starred show was airing, and the IMDB credit for the villain would have been “Killer Whale”. Instagram might succeed in bringing back that name in an artist-formerly-known-as-Prince kind of way. Symbol is no substitute for substance. (See what happened there, my converting friend?!)
I have a Hawaiian friend with both a special Devotion to Mary, and a direct “mystic” communication with the whales. She has “Incorporated” both. The Whales have told her that they sing the next that holds Life together. As we e seen in the Right Whale decimation, they tell her we are singing the song of death. This I take not emotionally or as an excuse for sel-righteous pride driven activism, but as seriously as Gospel truth. In her visits to the whales, she is carried over the Deep within the wind on the waters. A-lo-ha.
You've been on an fantastic writing tear recently, but this was especially good.