The Blogger is Back
Posted on March 8th, 2006 in Uncategorized | 13 Comments »
And, frankly, he’s not entirely happy about it. The plan was to have New York burst into spring while I was gone. A failed plan. Meanwhile, Cozumel was gloriousâand inspiring.
Last October, the Mexican island off the Quintana Roo coast was devastated by Hurricane Wilma, which for three days more or less parked itself over Cozumelâimagine living through a hellish storm for 84 hours. Homes and streets were flooded. Electricity was out for three weeks. Concrete piers were lifted up out of the water and deposited on land. Hotels, houses, and the Navy barracks were destroyed. Boats moored in the caleta sank or were tossed on shore. And, most saddening to me, thousands of reef fish were carried by the waves onto the land to die.
The economic impact on the island was enormous. For a couple of months after the storm, tourism vanished, of course. The docks at which cruise ships parked simply weren’t there any longer. (I dived under those docks once, and believe me, they were pretty substantial.) Divers stayed away. Numerous businesses were forced to close. Many Mexicans who’d come to Cozumel to work simply left the island, never to return.
But the people of Cozumel are resilient, and rebuilding started as soon as the water was gone. Along the main street of San Miguel, you’d never know that there’d been such destruction just a few months ago. The dive boats are up and running. And the reefsâwell, there’s some good news and some bad news. Some sections of the reefs are in worse shape than before; parts of them look stripped of life, or buried in sand. Elsewhere, though, new sections of reef have been opened up and uncovered. The storm has brought new things into the openâlike a massive anchor found in a sandy section of Palancar, estimated to be about 100 years old and never seen before. (Near it are about fifteen hefty bricks, apparently ballast from whatever boat sank there.)
And the fishâone of whom is pictured aboveâare there in force. We saw this particular eagle ray swimming along a sandy stretch, digging for conch (which tells you something about how powerful its jaws are). Eagle rays are astonishingly graceful, beautiful animals; they are also shy, and don’t like divers’ bubbles. The trick when you see one is to drop to the bottom and try to flatten your profile as much as possible. Basically, you hug the sand.
This one was a determined feeder and let us get pretty close before gently flapping his wings and lifting off (they really do look like they’re flying). I mentioned in my last post that diving is a humbling experience; it is also a spiritual one. Seeing an animal like this in the wild is perhaps the best explanation I can give.
13 Responses
3/8/2024 2:54 pm
I have to say, Rich, you are quite the Renaissance man. Journalist, policy wonk, music maven, adventurist, animal lover… spiritualist. A dark horse candidate for the Harvard presidency perhaps?
3/8/2024 3:18 pm
Spiritualist? I thought those were the people who lead seances…
You did, however, forget “blogger.” 😉
3/8/2024 3:46 pm
Welcome back, Rich. Come on though, you were most saddened by the hurricane’s toll on the fish? I think the devastation to the human community has to be your first concern, then you can lament the damn fish.
3/8/2024 7:06 pm
Well, I don’t think anyone died on Cozumel, so…and there are a lot of fish I like better than a lot of people, so I don’t automatically assume that human life is more valuable than marine life. But that’s just me.
3/9/2024 11:57 am
In fact, several marines died when the wall of their dorm (right on the ocean) caved in. Your heartless fish-lover, you.
3/9/2024 12:11 pm
Hi, Peter. Yes, that’s correct, and of course that is terrible.
As part of a larger conversation, though, I would not argue that human life is always more valuable than animal life. Given the choice between killing a blue whale and Hitler, I’d kill Hitler.
That’s an extreme example, of course, but I could move in from the margins. My point is that there’s an arrogance in assuming that humans, just because we sit on top of the food chain—are, in other words, apex predators—are in some fundamental way more valuable to the planet than other animals. (We certainly don’t treat great white sharks with that level of respect; in fact, we kill them for that status.) We feel the deaths of humans more, of course, because we know them, we are them. But are their deaths inherently more meaningful, more tragic?
We have to believe this, because we so wantonly slaughter animals—how many dolphins have died pointlessly in miles and miles of drift nets? How, if we start to really consider the morality of killing animals for pleasure or without purpose, can we live with ourselves?
3/9/2024 12:56 pm
Seriously, though, how was that red snapper with garlic sauce you had the other night?
3/9/2024 1:30 pm
Note this phrase: < <...if we start to really consider the morality of killing animals for pleasure or without purpose...>>
3/9/2024 2:13 pm
The key distinction here being that the animals we are talking about are fish and the cause of death, a hurricane. In this particular context, yes, the human tragedy is much, much greater. As always with the animals rights argument, it is a matter of degree. I, for one, will not argue that animals shouldn’t be maintained and slaughtered as humanely as possible, but once you compare the wholesale death of chickens to, say, the Holocaust, you lose mountains of credibility-and not just within that issue.
3/9/2024 2:35 pm
Indeed. But I didn’t make that comparison, and I wouldn’t. But I do agree that yes, it’s a matter of degree…and also there’s the question of the hierarchy of intelligence. I can’t say that I care as much about a chicken as I do about a whale or dolphin.
3/9/2024 3:08 pm
The “hierarchy of intelligency”. Gee, sounds an awful lot like the kind of thing a certain university president ex-officio would say. So, lets see, which is preferable: a holocaust of chickens, the death of a single dolphin or you going without your favorite fish dish? Quick, you shouldn’t have to think about this one….
3/10/2024 12:50 am
Well, I was referring to humans and animals, not within the human race, or between human genders…and honestly, that really doesn’t strike me as very problematic.
3/10/2024 12:27 pm
If there is such a thing as a hierarchy of intelligence as between different species, it would not be a great leap to posit one as between races, genders, etc. within a species. Of course, that would not be a leap you would want to make. But dividing any of god’s creatures according to value — whether on a scale of supposed intelligence or otherwise — is fraught with peril, spiritual and moral. Indeed, I thought that was your original point. If you would (a) eat a fish when