From a lecture given in Biology 6040, “Animal Behavior,” East Carolina University, 2008
With limited intelligence and absolutely no knowledge of Biophilia
But tons of testosterone, money and privilege,
They kill our big-eyed deep water Marlin as a gaggle of local dock Creeps
Give them cheers and big bucks to do so.
None of the high testosterone Yuppies has a bloody clue
About top-predator biology, anthropocentricity or exploitation.
Some might call it the “Tragedy of the Commons.”
What if the big fish are cognitive and have feelings?
What about their being hoisted up to cheers and fist pumps,
Their last big-eyed vision being that of their upside down “high T” murderers?
What about those gut hooked and released
To swim in painful circles for the sharks to plunder?
My wife, saddened by the spectacle,
Asks if they clean and eat the “poor big fish”.
I tell her the rule of my Mississippi grandfather:
“If you kill it, Boy, then you shall eat it,” which they blissfully ignore.
I respond further by saying that the 5 hundred pound Marlins are doomed to the wall,
Stuffed, mounted and once again staring down
At those who placed them there;
Their tissue, viscera and sinew most likely going to cats, blue crabs and incinerators.
They call this type of exploitation “Ecotourism;”
Say it’s good for the economy.
They embrace the pontifications of Aristotle and Saint Augustine
And all that “humans are on top the evolutionary shit pile scala naturae Judeo-Christian nonsense.”
None have read anything about biodiversity,
Pelagic predation,
Human etiologies to the crises in the world’s oceans,
And, I am absolutely positive, nothing on the cognitive ethology of fishes.
So what do you Nawth Kackalacky students think about this Outer Banks anthropocentric outrage?
“I’ll tell you what I think.”
And what is that, Ms. Midjette?
“Dr. Daniel, you should be fired for lecturing like this!”