The Place For My Writers Notes

Original posting 24 October 2007

I know it's anthropomorphizing, but . . .

The lunchtime news station had a little piece about some place up in Hokkaido. On a river, well inland from the shore.

So imagine you're a fish. Some kind of salmon, I think. And you've swum this far up the river. And there's a stupid flood control dam there, just high enough that the fish can't jump over it.

But you found the wooden collection space where they are trapping the fish. You've joined the horde flipping away in there. There were enough fish that it looked like you could walk on the water.

And now they put a large net on a frame into the space and use poles to drive the fish into the net. Haul the net up full of fish and dump it into a triangular space with a jet of water pumping into it. Flippety, flip, flip.

And you find the pipe that exits this space, along with some others, and dive into it. Long dark pipe that leads . . .

Across the dam, over the waters, and dumps you . . . onto a wooden deck, slippery with water.

And here is the indignity. While you are madly wriggling and trying to get further up river on this silly deck that they stuck in your way, one of several men stomps over in his plastic boots and looks down at you, then bats you to his left or right, depending on whether you are a male or female. He's got this wooden rake, and shoves you along. Another helper gives you a boost with his rake, and plop. You fall off the deck into a holding cage full of your sex mates. But . . .

Wasn't the whole point of this swimming up the river thing to find someone of the other kind? How you gonna finish the business if you get stuck in this cage?

I gather that they are "farmed" fish, and that in fact there is a careful program of replenishment. But wow! For the fish, it must be quite a come-down. Here you are, overcoming freshwater, swimming away upstream despite all the odds, ready to go out and reproduce for old Mother Nature, and bam! You get stuck in this series of tanks and pipes and people shoving you around with rakes. What a discouraging turn of events!

Makes you want to tell the next generation to try another river or something, eh?