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splatoonlink · 2 years

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My Top 11 Favorite Fish

would’ve been 10 but i screwed up

#11: Coelacanth

this one almost tied with tripod fish, but i had to choose coelacanths because their story is just so moving. imagine thinking that a fish has been dead for millions of years only to discover it alive and well in the deep sea. it’s beautiful, and it gives me hope that maybe some day we might find some other wonderful creatures in the deep. bonus points for their beautiful appearance (no pic cause i hit the limit 😔), but i’m also subtracting some because their name is hard to spell. (also worth mentioning that including lungfish, they’re some of the only lobe-finned fish still alive today, making them our fishy relatives!)

#10: Leafy Sea Dragon

this one is an old favorite. as the name implies, it looks a lot like a bunch of leaves drifting around in the sea (and acts like it too). these guys are relatives of the seahorse, and while they don’t have the same weird upright position, they’re still very unique and interesting! plus they’re called dragons, which is awesome. (also worth mentioning that sea horses/dragons are related to pipefish! look it up and you can totally see the resemblance between pipefish and their freaky cousins)

#9: Black Sturgeon

these fish are just very appealing. they’re big, beautiful, and ancient. what else is there to want? plus, you can sometimes find them in aquarium touch pools and they’re really fun to pet. unfortunately, sturgeons are some of the most endangered fish on earth, partially in thanks to the caviar trade which harvests their eggs as a delicacy. i sincerely hope that we as a species can do something to stop this in order to keep these spectacular fish from going extinct.

#8: Red Cornetfish

admittedly i don’t really know that much about these guys aside from the fact that they live in japan. but, they’re really silly looking. like they’re so silly. there’s just something so delightful about a fish with a long snout... if you want to see some other silly fish, i’d recommend looking up trumpetfish, elephant nose fish, needlefish, and sawfish.

#7: Sockeye Salmon

these guys are like the archetypical salmon species. when you think of salmon, you think of them. honestly, salmonids are probably my favorite group of fish; there’s something so compelling about the transformation they go through and the upstream journey they face in order to spawn. they’re very unique and unusual fish. also, i like how they look when spawning, it’s very pretty… sometimes their bright, shiny red scales make my brain think they look like a fruit gummy.

#6: Longnose Gar

just look at its face- isn’t it just the cutest thing in the world? gar are a type of predatory freshwater fish that have been around for 100 million years, since the time of the dinosaurs! a lot of them have adorable scale patterns, like stripes and spots, and the longnose gar is no exception. but of course the reason i like it so much is cause of that big ol’ schnoz. it’s just so silly and cute!

#5: Moray Eel

a delightfully long boy with a terrifying set of teeth. moray eels like to hide in crags and crevasses and ambush unsuspecting prey! their bright colors might seem to make them stand out, but they’re actually pretty hard to spot among the coral. additionally, moray eels have a coating of slime on their bodies that protects them from parasites and infections. also i just think their faces are cute. there’s just something about them, y’know?

#4: Leopard Shark

a lot of people love sharks, and for good reason- they’re totally awesome! my favorite shark is the leopard shark. their spotted markings are beautiful and i find their body shape a lot prettier than most other sharks. watching them swim is truly mesmerizing… also, they’re one of those weird sharks where their eggs hatch inside the womb and are given birth to later. you’d think they would prefer to either lay eggs or give live birth but i guess some sharks just can’t choose…

#3: Atlantic Sailfish

what an extraordinary fish! in addition to being the fastest fish in the world with top speeds of 70mph, they have a striking appearance that’s hard to forget. the deep blues and bright yellows accented with a clean white is just perfect in every way. and have i mentioned that they can change color? it isn’t talked about much, but these fish are group hunters and will change color to confuse their prey and warn their buddies before they attack with the giant sword on their face. how wonderful!

#2: Hagfish

deep sea creatures hold a special place in my heart, and hagfish really encapsulate why with their perfect blend of cute, creepy, and interesting. for starters, their lack of eyes might be scary, but it just makes their little faces so much cuter! however, what looks like their mouth is actually just their nose! their real mouth looks straight out of a horror movie (in fact, i’ve seen a horror movie monster use this exact mouth) with a big mouth full of teeth. they don’t have jaws, so they just have to kind of wiggle around in order to rip flesh from the bodies they scavenge. and don’t even get me started on the properties of their slime! (seriously. don’t get me started). hagfish and lampreys are the only known jawless fish alive today, making them truly special. i just really love hagfish okay they’re everything to me.

#1: Cherry Salmon

it’s the fish you’ve been waiting for, the cherry salmon! i’m honestly not as much of an expert on these guys as i am on hagfish, but that doesn’t mean i don’t love them with all my heart. i love cherries and i love salmon, so cherry salmon are like an awesome combination of two awesome things. and just look at those beautiful markings! i’m gonna be honest, the reason why i like them in the first place is because of animal crossing. i kept catching them, and i was like “oh this fish is the best fish ever actually.” and i still think that. they’re just so cute, so beautiful, and they have an awesome name. (yes i’m called cherry cause of them what about it). overall, even if these fish aren’t super interesting or unique, they’re delightful little guys, and i really love them for that.

and that’s the end of the list! if you’re reading this, thanks for making it this far. feel free to leave a reply telling me what your favorite fish is, or send me an ask! if you have a list idea you think i should make, let me know because i love talking about sea creatures. i’m not making any of them as long as this one tho lol

#fish #marine biology #deep sea #sea creatures #mine

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thiswasinevitableid · 4 years

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You what would be hella? An angsty-ish fic with the ice prompt. Your work is so lovely and well-written, I cant wait to read what ever you next produce!

Thank you so much for that, I’m glad people are excited to read my stuff! Since you didn’t specify a pairing, I went with Sternclay. Angst ahoy (but with a happy ending), along with me playing fast and loose with arctic geography.

He’s one of the lucky ones.

Joseph Stern, scientist aboard the HMS Erebus, is a fastidious man. He is also, unfortunately, prone to bouts of seasickness meaning his meals have been scant, even before the ships became locked in.

But it also means he was not eating food tinned in cans laden with lead. And his experimental water system, with which he occupied himself on long days, meant he drank more filtered sea water and ice than he did from the stores tainted with the same blasted material.

So when he and the remainder of the skeleton crew left the Erebus and her sister the Terror, his mind was much clearer than most.

And that is why, when the bulk of them turned a direction that likely held only more ice, more death, carrying a writing desk while leading freshwater behind, he refused to follow, insisting their best hope of civilization laid the opposite way.

They left him and his supplies, unwilling to listen to his case. And so he has walked, then trudged, then barely moved, across the ice.

When he hits water, cursed sea water, he contemplates stepping into it. But drowning would be worse than freezing, or so he’s heard.

A head surfaces in a hole through the ice. A mans head.

Stern blinks, confused. Then he laughs.

“Maybe I should take to the sea after all. You look well fed.”

The man frowns, “You look nearly dead.”

“I am.” He sits down, knees hugged to his chest for warmth.

“I’m, uh, I’m sorry.” The man emerges from the ice, and in place of legs he has a spotted and strong tail, like that of the seals Stern used to watch from his cabin window.

“Unless you control the weather, I don’t think you need to be.” In any other time, the sight of a legendary creature would send him into a frenzy of delight and curiosity. Now he simply stares.

“Why are you here?”

“The Northwest Passage.”

“That’s, um, that’s a trade thing, right? Your kind wants to move the things you sell more easily across the waters.”

“You’re well read for a merman.”

“My home isn’t that isolated.” He shrugs.

Stern stares at the water, peeking through cracks in the ice, “So many dead. So many more will die, I’ve no doubt, and all for a quicker route for spices and gold.” He can’t even weep, his body won’t let him use the energy, but he shudders in distress.

“Hey, hey it’s okay. “ The merman slides to him, cups his cheeks, strokes his beard, and his hands are warm, warm and real, and Stern presses against them, “I mean, it sounds fucking awful, but that, um, that doesn’t sound as comforting.”

“I don’t mind the comfort.” Stern rests his hands on the man’s chest, then his mind gets a moment of true clarity, “wait, your home. You said your home is not that isolated. Is it near?”

“Um, I can reach it in a few hours but” he points to his tail, “that’s the way I can. On foot it’ll take longer. And unless the humans I know have been really wrong about some stuff, I think if you try to swim with me you’ll die, like, right away.”

“I’ve walked lord knows how far. I can manage a little more, if you point the way.”

The merman looks torn, then takes Sterns hands, “I can do one better. I’ll be your guide. If you’re closed off from the water’s edge, look under the ice.”

He slides back the way he came, surfaces a few moments later to Sterns right. So Stern follows him, sometimes no more than shape to his right, other times a ghostly shadow swimming beneath and in front of him. When night falls and Stern manages a paltry fire and shelter with his supplies, Barclay, as the mer calls himself, promises to return at sunrise, and does so without fail for the next two days.

As he trudges across the icy ground, the best moments are when his path allows Barclay to swim right beside him, head above water so they can converse. It’s worth the effort, the inhaling of cold air, to converse with another being. Better yet, Barclay is bright and friendly, curious about Stern’s research in a way none of his crewmates were. Barclay tells him stories of merfolk and sea monsters, even makes him laugh, in return for Stern telling him about life in England and his research into undiscovered species.

“They offered me the chance to study far off lands, discover creatures thought only to be legend. Silly thing to die for.”

“Doesn’t sound like you were the one who got the ships stuck. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to learn about the world.”

Stern’s rations have run out, and when he stumbles, Barclay doubles back, concerned.

“I, I need, food, I’ll-”

“Wait right here.” Barclay disappears. Stern counts snowflakes, heartbeats, anything to distract from the pain in his belly.

A fish hits the ice in front of him. Then it flops and wiggles across the slick surface, back into the water.

“Damn it.” He giggles, near hysterical.

The fish lands again, head now gone.

“Sorry, forgot humans aren’t great with live prey.” Barclay says sheepishly.

Stern eats five more fish Barclay brings him, manages to get to his feet and continue on.

Night falls, colder than the last few, and Barclay disappears with his usual promise to return.

------------------------------------------

“He’s not going to last the night, Barclay.”

Barclay turns, finds his friend Indrid in his human form at the door of his house on Amnesty Island. The seer gives him a sad smile.

“No. No he can’t. I won’t let him.”

“Barclay-”

“Indrid” Barclay grabs his shoulders, “do you remember when you found Duck? How frightened he was, how he was certain you were death coming for him?”

“Yes.” Indrid says, pain flashing on his face. He’d found the human, left behind by his research expedition. Duck had volunteered to stay behind and freeze, in hopes of his team having enough rations to make the nearest town if they were a man short. Indrid found him, brought him back to Amnesty, cared for him. Fell in love with him and Duck, after a few weeks, returned the sentiment with gusto.

“I can’t let that happen to Joseph. I can’t, Indrid, please, the last week, I, he’s unlike any guy I’ve ever met. I can’t let him suffer that way.”

Indrid’s face goes blank. Then he gives Barclay an unusually severe stare, “You have very little time, and you must follow my instructions to the letter.”

---------------------------------------------------

He’s going to die. It’s too cold, his body too weak. He is going to die alone, his family will never know what befell him, and he will never even get the chance to thank Barclay for his kindness, for making his last days bearable, at moments almost enjoyable.

Lord have mercy on his soul. Let it be painless.

All for nothing, for trade and money, is this end in the ice.

Have mercy.

He can’t see. His heart seems to slow. In the distance, something crunches on the snow.

Mercy.

-----------------------------------

“So this is the fella you took my boat and my dogsled for?”

“Yes, Mama, I’m sorry.”

The woman’s voice has a laugh in it, “You always did have a big heart. Guess it was only a matter of time before you brought some hard-luck human in.”

“He’s not just any human.” A warm hand brushes Stern’s hair, “I’ve never felt this way about a human before. A few other mers maybe, when I was younger.”

“Uh, Mama? Indrid says we got a ship comin in soon and we might wanna buy more’n normal.”

Why in the lord’s blessed name is hearing a southern accent?

He tries to ask this question, gets a groan out instead.

“He’s awake!” Barclays’ voice gets closer, and when he manages to open his eyes he finds familiar, deep brown ones looking at him.

“How...where?”

“Amnesty Island. My home.” He supports Stern’s head, helping him drink blessedly clean water.

“That’s...that’s not on any map I’ve seen.”

“And for damn good reason.” A woman with graying hair stands behind Barclay, “only those who need to know can find us, on account of the northern mers wanting some islands that were safe for them. Barclay decided you needed to know.”

“Thank you, Barclay. And thank you Mrs, um?”

“Cobb. But just call me Mama. Now, rest of you get, we need to haul supplies off that boat and Barclay needs some time with his fella.”

When the door of the small cabin closes, Stern reaches out, stroking Barclay’s coppery beard, “Why did you save me?”

“Because you’re a good guy. And, well, I care about you a lot. I like you even more. I couldn’t just leave you to die.”

This time, Stern weeps, with relief and exhaustion and the ghosts of his fear. Shivers even as tears dot his pillow.

“Shhh, shhhhh it’s okay, I mean it this time. You still cold?”

Stern nods and Barclay tosses another blanket on top of him in bed. When the next wave of tears clear, the larger man is down to long underwear.

“May I?” He points to bed, and Stern weakly lifts the covers. Barclay climbs beneath them, wraps Stern in his arms, body flooding him with warmth and safety.

“Been wanting to do this since that first day, but mer bodies aren’t great for keeping humans dry and warm. Kinda damp.”

“All-” Stern yawns, “all the same, I would like the chance to explore yours in more detail some day.”

“You got it.” Barclay hesitates, then kisses Stern’s temple, “but right now, time for you to rest. I’ll make you breakfast in the morning. Raw, decapitated fish aside, I’m a damn good cook. Any requests?”

“Eggs. Good lord I’ve missed eggs.”

“Think I can rustle something up. Heh, that tickles.” He chuckles when Stern rubs his cheek against the exposed patch of dark-haired chest.

“It won’t for long. I’ll be clean shaven as soon as I can hold a razor without shaking. You think I’m handsome now, just wait til you see me well fed and groomed.”

“Looking forward to it.” A kiss on the cheek, then snowflake-light on his lips, “ goodnight Joseph. You’re safe here, I’ll see to it. And I’ll be here when you wake up, I promise.”

“Just like old times.” Stern says, only half-joking.

Another, tender kiss, “Yep, just like old times.”

#agent stern/barclay #sternclay #angst #hurt/comfort #mermay fills

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southeastasianists · 4 years

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Fishermen in northeast Thailand say they have seen catches in the Mekong River plunge, while some farmers in Vietnam and Cambodia are leaving for jobs in cities as harvests of rice and other crops shrink.

The common thread driving these events is erratic water levels in Asia’s third longest waterway.

Water flows along the 4,300km (2,700 mile) Mekong shift naturally between monsoon and dry seasons, but non-governmental groups say the 11 hydroelectric dams on China’s portion of the river – five of them starting operation since 2017 – have disrupted seasonal rhythms. This threatens food security for the more than 60 million people in the Lower Mekong that rely on the river for a livelihood, they say.

“Naturally, Mekong water rises and decreases slowly about three to four months from highest to lowest levels,” said Teerapong Pomun, director of the Mekong Community Institute, an NGO focused on water resource management and based in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

“[But now] the water levels fluctuate almost every two to three days all year, and every year, because of the dams.”

Beijing has taken issue with assessments that accused Chinese dams of causing shifts in Mekong water levels, especially a United States think tank report on April 13 that said China was withholding water upstream, citing satellite data. China said the report failed to recognise that low rainfall caused a drought in 2019, the worst to hit the region in 50 years.

Whatever the argument, the food supply and livelihoods for tens of millions of people are at stake. The coronavirus pandemic is adding another twist to the troubling dynamic.

“The situation in the Mekong is worrying as the prolonged drought poses dire threats to regional countries from various aspects, particularly in terms of food security,” said Zhang Hongzhou, a research fellow with Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. “It will certainly adversely affect Beijing��s relations with the Mekong region countries.”

The Mekong River nourishes wetlands known as Asia’s rice bowl thanks to the high nutrient loads the river disperses. Because so many people live off and from the river, disruptions to its water levels can be devastating.

“Farm crop yields decrease, animals die, which has a huge impact on the livelihood of people as their life depends on natural resources,” said Bunleap Leang, the executive director of 3S Rivers Protection Network, an NGO that works to support dam-affected communities in northeastern Cambodia.

Mekong water levels fell to a record low in July last year, causing Vietnam, the world’s third-largest rice exporter, to declare a state of emergency for the five provinces in the Mekong Delta that produce more than half the country’s crop. Local authorities have warned the drought could run into May or longer.

In April, the US Department of Agriculture forecast that 2020 rice yields in Vietnam would fall by 3.3 per cent from the previous estimates because of the drought and subsequent saltwater intrusion, leaving the harvest 0.9 per cent lower for the year.

Farmers are especially hard hit because when the water level falls, they have to buy more fuel for water pumps so their costs increase at the worst time, Pomun said. This is driving farmers from their rice fields to find other work, while Thai fishermen on the Mekong are pulling in empty nets, he said.

Besides the impact on agriculture, the Mekong and its tributaries make up the largest freshwater fishery in the world and catches are a mainstay of the diet for local people. Fish account for as much as 82 per cent of animal protein consumed locally, according to a report by the Mekong River Commission (MRC), an intergovernmental organisation representing Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand.

The inland fisheries of the Mekong basin are a “lifeline” for the people of the region, said the MRC on its website, which warns of “severe” consequences from disruption to the catch, especially as the population of the Lower Mekong is estimated to rise to 100 million people by 2025 from the current 60 million.

Those consequences are already arriving, according to a 2018 report by the MRC, which was updated in January last year.

“Fisheries production is expected to decline substantially upstream because of the hydropower dams and their impacts on migration, habitats and primary production,” it said.

The report looked at different scenarios for fisheries based on water resource projects going out decades. It forecast a possible 40 per cent drop in fish catches through 2020 and as much as 80 per cent less by 2040.

The report shows that as populations are forecast to increase along the Mekong, fish stocks are likely to collapse through a combination of the dams, illegal fishing prompted by shortages, and climate change.

In Cambodia, fish catches have plunged in Tonle Sap Lake, Southeast Asia’s largest inland lake that inflates in size with Mekong seasonal flows. The MRC report expected Tonle Sap annual average fish production to fall from 350,000 to 260,000 tonnes by 2020, and to 200,000 tonnes by 2040.

China’s dam-building ambitions on the river, which originates in the Tibetan Plateau and is known as the Lancang in Chinese territory, can be traced back to the 1950s, when engineers conducted surveys of the river in Yunnan province in southwest China.

From the 1980s, China ramped up hydroelectric dam construction on rivers to meet growing power demand as its economy began a blistering period of growth, eventually to unseat Japan in 2010 as the world’s second-largest economy. A total of 14 dams were envisioned for the Lancang and 11 are now in operation with others planned or under construction.

China also exported its hydropower know-how to developing countries further down the Mekong, especially Laos and Cambodia, where Chinese companies financed and built a number of projects. They include the Nam Ou 1 Hydropower Dam about 40km upstream from the city of Luang Prabang in Laos and the Lower Sesan 2, the biggest in Cambodia.

The damming of the Mekong in recent decades has generated repeated concerns about environmental damage, social upheaval and the value of the economic trade-off.

Concerns about food security in the region moved back into the spotlight last month when research and consulting company Eyes on Earth Inc said satellite data showed China had above-average rainfall from May to October last year, but withheld the water behind its dams during the drought.

Citing these findings, Brian Eyler, Southeast Asia programme director of the Stimson Centre, a Washington-based think tank, said China’s dams had effectively “turned off the tap on the Mekong River”.

China and the MRC contested these findings, with Beijing saying it was unjustified to blame its dams for the drought.

In a statement on April 21, the MRC said “more scientific evidence was necessary to conclude that the 2019 drought was in large part caused by water storage in Upper Mekong dams.” It added that water flows “from China were higher than normal for the 2019 and 2020 dry seasons”.

The Mekong body said that while upstream dams had altered seasonal flows of the river, the drought was “due largely to very low rainfall during the wet season with a delayed arrival and earlier departure of monsoon rains, and an El Nino event”.

However, the commission said that more sharing of data and transparency was needed between the four members and its so-called dialogue partners, China and Myanmar.

“A transparent data-sharing arrangement on how water and related infrastructures are operated will help everyone manage risks and avoid misperception,” Dr An Pich Hatda, the MRC secretariat’s chief executive officer, said in the statement.

Experts say the Mekong’s water levels fluctuate every two to three days all year round because of the hydroelectric dams. Photo: AFP

Harris Zainul, an analyst with the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in Malaysia, said the coronavirus pandemic could become a factor in the Mekong water disputes. Covid-19 has prompted lockdowns in many countries, which can block farmers from getting food to markets.

“If this were to happen, then countries, including those downstream of the Mekong, would be more sensitive towards the adverse effects arising out of lower water levels on the Mekong,” Harris said, adding that it could cause a public backlash against China in Mekong nations and prompt demands for action.

Beijing has said it works with downstream nations on water management through the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) established in 2015 by China, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. China is the largest trading partner for the Mekong members.

At an LMC summit in February, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his counterparts from the five Mekong states that Beijing had increased water outflows from the Lancang to mitigate the drought in the Mekong region.

China had suffered, too, he said. In Yunnan province, the local government said the region was hit by the worst drought in a decade, with average rainfall dropping 18 per cent.

Pomun said part of the problem was a lack of transparency and cooperation from China, and that downstream villagers were often caught off guard by an unexpected release of water from China’s dams. When water was released without warning, crops on the riverbanks became flooded, he said.

“That is why we ask for transparency as we need to find out how much per cent of the drought is caused by the dams and how much is caused by climate change.”

Pomun said he was worried the coronavirus pandemic might worsen the situation as countries turned inward to protect their own natural resources.

People would “keep the water to themselves more, to produce electricity for the economy, for their own country”, he said.

#agriculture #food security #water security #vietnam #mekong river #myanmar #cambodia #thailand #laos

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lucyhblack · 4 years

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I can't decide on Spicyhoney, Spicyhoneymustard or Spicykustard.

Summary: Red and Edge are pirates who find an unusual "treasure".

Red and Edge are pirates, with Edge being the captain and Red being his ship's immediate.

After capturing a boat that brought treasures from distant lands to the King, they find a skeleton as part of the "treasure".

The skeleton (UT! Sans or US! Papyrus) was trapped in, naked and scared, cage. Amazed and curious (skeleton monsters aren't even rare, so why trade them as a "treasure" and not just as a slave? Even more one that doesn't seem to have anything too much?) they decide to take it with them (thinking about maybe selling it as a slave more afternoon), but as soon as they get him out of the cage the poor monster tries flees.

Despite the malformation in his legs that prevents him from walking properly, yet he reaches the top of the ship just to look desperately at the ocean.Having nowhere to run, he is recaptured and chained to the mast as punishment.

Red and Edge try to communicate with the skeleton to no avail. He doesn't seem to understand a word of them and the few sounds he makes are incomprehensible. The two speculate whether he just doesn't know their language or if he has a disability beyond his legs, which may well be the case, given how the monster behaves.

The monster looks completely agonized over something (other than its sad situation), almost as if in pain. Felldyne is convinced that the skeleton is sick, but the monster seems to be in good health despite having a very low HP.

They seriously consider just getting rid of the monster (just one more mouth to feed and one that might not even be worth as much), but Red ends up convincing Edge that if they don't even get a good price, they'll still be able to sell it to some brothel for a reasonable price (and if not, he can serve as a free exp.).

One day in a moment of distraction, the skeleton escapes the chains. The pirates watch him with amusement, letting him wander stumbling across the deck, after all where would he go?

The skeleton ignores them all and seems to be frantically looking for something. It is when he sees one of the pirates pour himself some water in a barrel, he makes the most desperate and happy sound they have ever heard. The skeleton simply pushes the monster aside and plunges itself into the barrel. Everyone watching the scene was a little shocked as the skeleton sank into the barrel.

Red, who watched everything from the shadows, is puzzled and somewhat amused, but not worried. Sure, skeletal monsters can't drown, but it does seem a little drastic and futile to hide there.

The Barrel starts to shake and Red goes to check the hidden monster. When he looks inside he immediately changes from amused to shocked and scared. He closes the barrel and takes it to Edge's cabin, ignoring all the other monsters that attended the show.

His brother is very angry with Red entering his cabin with a barrel of water. Red says that his "guest" is inside and Edge worries that his brother has lost patience and killed the other skeleton.

An anguished sound comes from inside the barrel which immediately starts to shake and oscillate dangerously.

Edge gets up and approaches the barrel when Red pulls him away with an arm just in time that the barrel can't take and explodes, soaking the floor and leaving a stunned merskeleton amid the wooden wreckage.

They look shocked that not a simple skeleton monster, but a very rare merskeleton.

Edge just wants to throw him into the sea (he's a bit of a fish after all), and get rid of the problem (mermaids are a bad omen... more or less), but Red thinks it's their lucky break. They can make a fortune selling it, much more than selling a skeleton monster.

A little upset, Edge agrees to keep the merskeleton hidden in his cabin. They can no longer let him loose (he is too valuable) nor do they want the rest of the crew to find out (If Edge, who was not someone superstitious, was worried about a mermaid in the boat, imagine the rest of the idiots he commanded).

As the merskeleton dries, its tail and fins disappear, leaving only bones again. The monster starts to whimper and irritated by the sound Edge orders Red to fill his bathtub with sea water, he will not waste precious fresh water with the mermaid when there is an abundance of salt water around him.

They try to put it in the bathtub, but the skeleton's reaction surprises them. It looks like they're forcing him to dip in acid. The mermaid escapes from her hands and crawls over to the soaked carpet where she begins to roll on it.

Red's mind clicks and he realizes that the skeleton is not just a simple mermaid, but a freshwater one. Edge is upset, but agrees to waste (another) barrel of water for the mermaid.

Now they have to keep the mermaid alive and hidden until they reach a port. A much more complicated task when you have to share the cabin with a creature full of mysteries and charms.

Fun point:

On the ship that carried it, the merskeleton was portrayed in the record books as a rare decorative freshwater fish.

Mermaids are considered a bad omen (after all they enchant sailors to drown), so Red and Edge have to hide that they have one inside the ship.

The Merskeleton cannot be released into the sea, because it would obviously die in the salt water.

He cannot stay out of the water for long or his magic weakens and disappears. When in contact with fresh water it forms its tail and fins.

It is extremely harmful for him to be out of the water for more than a days, starting with discomfort until it becomes unbearable agony.

He doesn't understand Edge or Red's language and neither do they understand his language.

He can't sing to save his life (to be honest he can sing, but even Felldyne with a sore throat sings better than he does).

Edge is determined not to fall for the mermaid's charms. The mermaid has no intention of using any "charm" to win over anyone, least of all her stupid captors.

Red is doing his best not to notice, but he is sure they will not sell the fish (and trying harder not to see his brother trying to use his charms on the mermaid)

The crew is amused that their thorny captain is finally in love with something other than his ego (they soon assume that the “prisoner” is “warming Edge's bed, but they have no idea what he really is).

Felldyne is the only one who "feels" that there is something strange about the skeleton monster (she is just bothered by Edge's proximity to him and having gone from the crew's amusement to the captain's "treasure"), and because of her lines that the skeleton "bewitched" his captain, Edge is even more determined not to fall for the mermaid's lip (Red is laughing and crying at the idiocy of his brother and everyone around him).

The mermaid will definitely stay on the ship, will eventually win over the crew (especially the captain and perhaps his mate) and become "one of them".

Edge and Red will try to put clothes on him, but most of the time he will dispense with his pants and will never wear shoes.

#undertale #underfell #uf!sans #uf!papyrus #spicyhoney #spicyhoneymustard #spicykustard #i can't decide #pirate au #pirate sans #pirate papyrus #uf!undyne #merskeleton #mermaid sans #or mermaid papyrus #Ideas Drafts #my fic

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weaselle · 5 years

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COMPLETE SHORT STORY

WRITING-PROMPT-S.TUMBLR.COM/POST/175961780920: PROMPT: YOU ARE A CREATURE WITH A FAERY MOM AND A VAMPIRE DAD. FROM YOUR MOM’S SIDE YOU’RE ALLERGIC TO IRON. FROM YOUR DAD’S SIDE YOU NEED BLOOD.

(special thanks again to desertskald for this drawing, which touched my heart)

A few days after your birth, your condition is diagnosed by an old gnome that makes house calls, who tells your parents that their daughter may not survive the week. Your vampire dad stays up all day in a sunless room researching. By evening he has a list of animals with blood that carries oxygen utilizing hemocyanin, similar to hemoglobin, but copper based. These creatures are all sea creatures, so your family moves to the shore.

The blood of various mollusks, crustaceans, and cephalopods is enough to keep you alive, but not healthy. Your father, obsessed with finding a way to de-ironize human blood, becomes a vampiric mad inventor, sort of a Dr. Frankenstein meets the Dad from Honey I Shrunk the Kids. He’s constantly coming to you with his latest experimental invention - homemade alchemical tablets that are supposed to dissolve in blood and turn iron molecules into gold (but half the time they change it to silver, which is equally problematic) fang tip filters that fit over your teeth and screen the blood (which actually works, they’re just so delicate they constantly break, often in the biting process, rendering them useless) heavily altered summoning rituals (if I can summon the whole demon, why can’t I summon just its blood?) various magic potion additives for mixing into blood (okay but you have to follow the recipe EXACTLY or you’ll leak all your minerals out of your eyes, and your bones will melt. You know what? never mind, give me that back) centrifugal devices featuring magnets (that one had a lot of promise, but none of the models ever quite did the whole job, and they weigh a ton)….

While your father is determined to discover a process that will allow you to feed on humans, your mother focuses on fairy magic hacks - she teaches you how to set circle traps, and syphon health from people, but, like all fairy magic, there is a trade off. The more health you syphon, the worse your health the next day when it wears off; it’s like a hangover. And, like with a lot of the darker magics, it becomes a little less effective each time you do it, requiring more and more health be syphoned to achieve the same gain. So she teaches you more things, how to use glamor to seem convincingly healthy, how to float instead of walk, how to ensnare the minds of mortals to use them as temporary servants if you need things. How to temporarily access various kinds of life force from forests, from the wind, from the creatures of the local biome, etc,. Standing next to you on the beach at night, she shows you how to pull power directly from the magic of the full moon, and use it to experience a brief respite from your sickliness… which grows slowly worse.

It’s all so tiring. You spend more and more time on the beach, sitting in tide-pools, staring out to sea, motionless. Time flows by without touching your immortal parents, and hardly anything changes. Your mother wanders off to follow her self interest, as fairies are wont to do, but she visits often. Your father is obsessed as only a vampire can be, and barely remembers to get enough to drink; many nights you have to ask him “Dad, when is the last time you exsanguinated anyone?”

Years pass.

One night as you are sitting on a rock amid the rising tide, idly draining crabs of their blood while lost in thought, you finally notice that every time you reach down into surf, another crab is put into your reaching hand. Looking down into the water, you see the laughing face of a playful young woman, and that’s how you meet Neera.

Neera, you learn, is half werewolf. Every full moon she must turn into a wolf, and so she can’t live in Finfolkheem, the crystal-halled deep sea home of her mother’s people, which is a three week journey from the nearest beach. And she can’t live with her father on land, of course. She doesn’t even know where he is, or if he’s alive. On her mother’s side, she’s finfolk, and part ceasg, part selkie, which somehow has something to do with her mother’s family and their ancient tradition of vacationing along the shores of Shetland. “I’m a total mutt,” she says, laughing, and you can’t help but smile. Her eyes are like black opal. She’s beautiful. Neera spends a lot of time alone. “Feral,” she grins, but, while loneliness has made you quite and shy, it seems to have had the opposite effect on Neera. She’s an amazing shape shifter. She can have a lower half that is plush-furred and flippered like a seal, or jewel-scaled and finned like a fish, and she can magically remove her fur or scales like a thick skirt, to reveal human legs. And while she is helpless to be anything but a wolf for three days out of the month, she can choose to be a wolf anytime she wants. “And I can be like, part wolf part human, like this” she shows you. “AND I can almost change into a whole seal, like great-gran, she’s a selkie, even though her daughter and grand daughter, that’s my mother, can’t do it” she tells you excitedly, “probably because of my were-blood; great-gran thinks selkies and werewolves may have been related way back when, that would kind of explain why I can take my scale-tail off the same way selkies change, so I think I’ll be able to go full seal. I haven’t quite got the trick of it yet, but soon I think. Mother hates me trying; when I first started I would turn into a wolf instead, and I almost drowned a couple times.” “My mother’s people don’t really like me” she confides one day, “most folk are frightened of me, because of my father; I even scare my siren cousins a little” she says, looking at you out of the corner of her eye in a rare moment of vulnerability. “Don’t worry, my dad’s a vampire,” you say, baring your fangs at her, “no werewolf is going to make me nervous” But she does make you nervous. But not, like, scared nervous. You still can’t believe she wants to keep hanging out with you. The two of you are soon spending almost all your time together, down on the beach. When your mother visits, she is glad her daughter has found “some fey creature” to be friends with, and you father is happy that you’re happy. “That’s great! My little fruitbat has a friend.” He looks up sharply “does she have red blood, or does she bleed blue?” “NO, Dad, I’m not going to eat Neera” you tell him, rolling your eyes. “Yeah, okay,” he agrees “seal and wolf, that’s a lot of mammal anyway, probably hemoglobin all the way…” he trails off as he resumes tinkering with a ferrous gel he’s trying to entice a half-tame poltergeist into possessing. Neera tells you about her ceasg family members “They’re basically Scottish mermaids closely related to the finfolk, they can live in lakes, rivers, seas and oceans; My grandmother was a full blooded freshwater ceasg, my mother is half ceasg, half finfolk and selkie. Have I told you about the time I met some oceanic ceasgs? The saltwater ceasgs can grow monstrous big, like if a whale was a mermaid!” Her stories are captivating, like everything about Neera. You grow more and more sickly, but you hardly care, spending your time on the beach watching Neera frolic in the waves and listening to the stories of her adventures. She discovers that your vampire heritage means that breathing is optional for you, and she guides you carefully to some nearby underwater caves. It’s the most beautiful adventurous thing you’ve ever experienced, until later that night, when you return to the beach and lay on your back in the surf, looking at the stars with Neera, and she reaches over and takes your hand in hers. ... “What would happen if you drank my blood for real?” She asks one evening as the two of you watch the waves. “Well, I’d have a terrible reaction to the iron in your blood, and I’d probably die.” “I thought faeries and vampires were immortal though.” “SOME faeries are immortal, others just live for thousands of years.” “Yeah, but, wouldn’t your vampire blood tip the scales there, make you true immortal?” “Probably,” you shrug “Actually yeah, Dad is pretty sure it would.“ “That’s cool,” she ruffles then smoothes the fur just below her hip; she’s been working on her selkie form. “Mermaids and werewolves and everything I am don’t really… I’ll probably only live about 200 years. I wish I had that vampire thing going on” Your compromised immortality is an uncomfortable subject for you, but the thought of Neera dying fills you with horror “It wouldn’t save me from death by iron though; faeries and vampires can be killed, they just don’t often die of old age. I might though. I keep getting worse” “Oh,” she leans against you for a moment, and kisses your shoulder. “But what if you weren’t allergic to iron?” She’s asking a moment later - nothing keeps Neera down for long - “What would happen if you drank my blood then?” “Well,” you say, playfully, “If I didn’t drain you empty, you’d be my thrall; You’d be under my spell, and you’d do anything I told you. For a while. It would wear off eventually.” Neera wiggles deeper into the sand “Your servant? Could be fun. But I thought I’d become a vampire too.” “No, for that after I drank almost all of your blood, you’d have to drink mine. If you could stomach it.” “Oh, come on,” she says, smiling with a mouthfull of teeth like piranha “you know I’d eat you right up” making you blush and change the subject. By the time you realize how deeply in love you are, it is obvious that you are dying. Vampires can’t live long on the blood of crustaceans; you’ve been dying this whole time, and the only reason you are still alive is because your fairy blood has made dying take so long. At least your own research in your fathers lab has turned up some information worth sharing with Neera. “Hey, I figured out what would probably happen if we did the blood exchange ritual” you tell her one morning, squinting in the glare. Neera looks up from her sunbathing, and flips seawater at you with her tail “Yeah?” “Yep. It doesn’t happen with finfolk or werewolves often, and, of course, I couldn’t find any literature on someone with your exact pedigree. But from all I could tell, you’d get the immortality at the price of blood dependence - the two are strongly linked. Your supernatural origins would probably cancel out most of the rest of it, so you wouldn’t even have to give up all this,” you say, waving your hand vaguely at the bright unpleasant sunlight. The sun didn’t do to you what it would to your father, but you don’t enjoy it the way Neera does. “You’d have to drink someone’s blood pretty often though, it’s a high price.” Neera laughs, a loud and shockingly happy sound that bounces around the cove “I’m finfolk and werewolf” she reminds you, still laughing “I lure men into the sea and drown them for fun, I snatch men off the side of the road and eat them for dinner at least once a month - I don’t think I’d be too broken up about a little change in diet like that.” For some reason it makes you love her all the more. One night the two of you are walking along the beach together, hand in hand, and you see a glint of a metal ring half buried in the sand. You both reach for it, then jump back exclaiming “Silver, YUCK!” in unison. You collapse on the sand together, laughing. “Oh what a shame,” Neera pouts, “I was looking forward to some new jewelry” You feel your breath catch, your sickly heart leaps and stutters. You reach into your pocket, for the ring you’ve been carrying around in cowardice for so long. You’ve only been waiting for the right moment, you’ve told yourself… but if this isn’t the right moment no moment ever will be. “Well,” you try to drawl casually, but your voice breaks “I’ve got this one made of gold. Has a diamond on it.” Neera looks at you with wide, wide eyes as you turn awkwardly in the sand and raise up on one knee. “Neera, you know I’m dying, and I have no right to ask you..” You can’t talk for a moment, and you see tears brimming in Neera’s eyes. That’s no good, if she starts crying you definitely will. You clear your throat “Neera, I… without you, my life wouldn’t…” all your carefully planned speeches are forgotten and useless “Neera, I love you with all my heart. Will you marry me?” She leaps onto you and kisses you deeper than you’ve ever been kissed. Somehow her tongue nicks a fang, hers, yours, impossible to tell - a single drop of her blood slides down your throat; you feel the small pang from the few molecules of iron in it, but you don’t care, you would suffer much worse for her to keep kissing you like this. The kiss comes to an end, but before you can remind her that she hasn’t actually answered yet, she says softly, lips still brushing yours “if” she kisses you again and then gets up, stepping back as you lay there on the beach, a strange look in her black eyes. “I love you so much,” she whispers “and yes,” her voice gets stronger “yes I’ll marry you IF” she takes another step back, swinging her scaled skirt/tail over one shoulder, “if you CATCH ME!” and with that she starts sprinting toward the water. Up to mid thigh in the ocean, she stops to put the skirt back on, where it transforms into her fish tail once more. “It won’t be easy!” she yells back at you as you climb to your feet “Show me how much you want to marry me!” and she disappears into the sea. Are you heart broken? The most excited you’ve ever been? Confused, that’s for sure. “Yes if??” What the hell is that?! And you’re still just standing on the beach! Concentrating, you summon your faery magic, casting a functional glamor that lets you move easily despite your sickly condition. Entering the water, you stop breathing - your vampire nature serves you well in this. You cast a spell similar to the one that lets you levitate, and you begin sliding through the water at a rapid pace. The blood, that single drop of her blood you swallowed, it gives you a faint sense of what direction she went. You follow quickly. After a few hours your glamour wears off. You are out deep in the ocean, and no closer to catching Neera. You are… angry. What the fuck. Who does that, just runs off and tells you to chase them? Is it a werewolf thing? Because the ocean makes that extra fucked up. You reach deep inside and connect to the old magic. Broadcasting it, you draw life-force from the local sea life. Of course you’ll pay for it later, and weak as you have become that will be especially hard on you, but you don’t care. Is she playing with your heart? No, your love is mutual, you trust her, something else is going on. You have to catch her. Burning up your borrowed energy, you surge through the water. After 24 hours, you are desperate. You’ve never used the fairy magic this heavily before. You’re in deep crushing blackness, but you utilize your vampire powers to counter it, seeing in the darkest dark, transmuting your flesh to mist to avoid being compressed like an empty can. Where IS she? After three days, you are more frightened than you’ve ever been. You’re not sure you’ll survive this. Your tenuous blood link to her indicates she still lives, but at this point you are scared for her too. You thought the blood link would wear off, but it seems to you that the intensity of your hunting is keeping it engaged. Engaged. Is that what you are now? Is this a selkie engagement ritual? You won’t get much further without at least a little blood of some sort. You latch onto a 6 foot humboldt squid like some kind of freakish remora. It fights you at first, tearing at you with all its arms but you drain it with such rapid savagery that it dies before it can do you much harm… A full week now, you’ve been zipping through the ocean. Periodically you cry. Sometimes you laugh. You’ve leaned on the old fey sorcery so hard that death seems the certain trade off at this point, and you are determined to look into Neera’s eyes one last time before it claims you. Fuck it. You were dying anyway. This has been the biggest adventure of your life, of most people’s lives. You’ve seen secrets no human has ever known, met demonic giants of the deep, passed by mysterious crystal cities on the lowest ocean floors, witnessed creatures thought extinct by even the long-lived and nature-sensitive fey. Only your love for Neera and your desire to see her one last time keeps you going, pulling a little life from every living creature within ten square miles of you with the darkest magics you know. The trail, blood link growing ever fainter, seems to indicate that Neera is heading for shallower waters. Suddenly it occurs to you: the full moon - she has to return to land, the ocean is no place for a wolf. It’s the third and final night of the full moon’s effects on her… how is she still in the water? Summoning your vampiric flavored fairy powers, you launch upward through the ocean and burst skyward, letting your emotion fuel a pull on the forces around you strong enough to put you up among the birds. You assess the blood link as you waver there, your outer body numb as it has been for days, the very blood in your veins vibrating painfully, your soul drained as a broken bottle. There, the beach of a small island, hardly more than a sandbar. You don’t think it’s on any map, but it has to be the place, the moon is out, Neera will be swimming as a wolf, as she has been for three days and nights, she has to be exhausted, she must be headed for that tiny strip of land. The magic falters, but you are so close, you grit your teeth and pull, and every seagull near falls dead from the sky as you use their stolen life to hurtle toward the beach. It isn’t going to be enough though. You aren’t going to make it. So close, but you start to fall. It’s too bad, because you can see a dark canine shape dragging itself painfully from the ocean. NEERA As you tumble through the air, you remember your mother, standing next to you on the beach at night, arms raised… …pulling power from the full moon. Crying, desperate, you try. The moon is sinking below the horizon as you make the tenuous connection. It’s just enough. You crash down onto the sand mere inches from a very wet and weary wolf, one hand closing around her hind leg. The magic is gone. Time to pay the price in full. To call it a hangover would be to laugh in the face of certain death, and you haven’t the strength. Your head bumps and shifts, and you open your eyes to see Neera, beautiful Neera, cradling your head in her scaled lap. You feel peaceful. You’ll die. It’s okay. “N…eera..” you manage, “dy… dying.” With great effort she pulls your torso upwards to embrace you. “No,” She whispers, clearly near the end of her own strength “you’re not going to. Remember I told you my gran was a ceasg?” Oh. It’s story time. That’s nice. Good way to go. Her voice is beautiful, even when strained from your shared ordeal. “Here’s something about ceasgs… sometimes they marry. Even mortals, if they are caught. And when you catch them… They can grant you wishes.” You thought you were paying attention before, but now every part of your brain that isn’t dead already is concentrating on her words “My gran, was full ceasg, when she was caught, she could grant three wishes,” Neera says, huskily, tears leaking from her inhumanly black eyes, “My mother was half ceasg,” she continues “and she was able to grant two wishes, but the chase had to be extra difficult, that quid pro quo all magic has… and it doesn’t work if you let yourself be caught” Neera starts to cry harder “Oh my love, I had to be sure, I had to be so certain, I had to try my very hardest. I pushed myself until I didn't know if I would make it” she sobs “I was so scared… but I knew you would catch me. I knew. And after a chase like that… I should be able to manage one single wish.” She leans down, resting her forehead on yours. “Don’t fuck it up,” she whispers, voice breaking “don’t wish to live… wish away your iron allergy” “…but…” It doesn’t make sense. The iron allergy doesn’t matter at this point “… die any… anyway.” “Sshhh. No you won’t. Because then, once you’ve made your wish, my sweet, my dearest… you’re going to drain me of blood” What? No. “… you… you die” Neera laughs through her tears “Me? Oh no my love, not me..” she brushes one thumb across your cheek and bares her fangs in a lewd and loving grin “Don’t you know? I’ve always wondered how the rest of you tastes…” Yes. YES. You close your eyes, and make your wish. Her blood is the sweetest most pure thing you’ve ever drunk. Life, stronger than any life you’ve lived before, floods your whole being. After, her fangs buried in the artery on the inside of your thigh, you feel an ecstasy your vampiric heart never knew it needed. Later, the two of you explore your new vampire selves together; never having drunk real blood, the experience is as new for you as it is to Neera. As the sun rises you dig a hole in the sand and cover yourselves in it, wrapped around each other to sleep. It just feels right. Laying in the cool dark underground, Neera snuggles against you. “SO," she asks mischievously, “what do you think of a deep-ocean marriage ceremony?” You laugh, “Wherever you want, my love; you already know… I’ll follow you anywhere” ________________________________________________________________

more fiction and other WIPS on my website Moulin Noir

#fiction #writing #story

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raisingsupergirl · 4 years

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It's Getting Better All the Time

I've seen a lot of encouraging responses to this whole "social distancing" craze, one of them being a greater focus on new hobbies and projects. And I love it. I've always been a hobbyist. I love learning and trying new things. Recently, I've really been into freshwater fish keeping and aquascaping, but that's just the latest in a long list of passions, and I'm sure that list will continue to grow with each passing year. After all, what's the fun of life if we're not continually exploring new ways to live? But growth and self-improvement aren't limited to anything so small as hobbies. No, humans are incredibly adaptable animals. It's what's allowed us to survive and flourish at the top of the food chain for so long. And it's exactly what's going to allow us to overcome COVID-19. I know this to be true because I've already seen the signs.

The old adage is that it takes 10,000 hours to become a master at any one thing. Of course, that's complete rubbish (I mean, how can it take the same 10,000 hours to master astrophysics and simple addition?), but there's wisdom in the sentiment. At hour one, we're basically newborn idiots, but it get's better. If I wanted to become a professional landscaper, I could either spend my life dreaming about it and fearing the daunting complexity of the craft, or I could begin that first hour by learning how to push mow a yard. And after a year plying my trade full-time, I would have 8,760 hours of research, training, and practice under my belt. The road to get there would be fraught with failed goldfish ponds and dead flowers, but each minute I pressed forward would be another step toward mastering the craft. And the same can be said for the situation we're all in right now.

The suggested quarantine time for anyone suspecting exposure to COVID-19 is 14 days. That’s 336 hours. That’s equivalent to working full-time at a completely new job for eight weeks. Now, would you expect to master that new job in eight weeks? Of course not. You'd know how to clock in. You'd know the names of your co-workers—maybe even the names of their spouses and pets. You'd know enough to start taking some responsibility for your actions, and your anxiety about going to work every day would just be easing up. But you'd be nowhere near comfortable in your work. And that example applies everyone in the US since we started taking this pandemic seriously. Sure, some have been prepping, researching, and taking precautions for months, but most of us have only begun to really buckle down for the last few weeks. That's the same 336 hours (taking out eight hours per day for sleep, assuming you're not lying awake at night worrying about it). But remember that easing anxiety I mentioned after eight weeks at a new job? Yeah, the same thing is happening to us regarding social distancing. It's getting less awkward, less foreign. And for those of us who have embraced social distancing our whole lives, we're ahead of the curve.

Sure, the virus is still spreading. The number of infected individuals is still rising. Businesses are still suffering, and grocery store shelves are still mostly empty. But restaurant takeout and grocery pick-up options are becoming more streamlined. We're seeing China and Italy starting to normalize, and that gives hope for our own country. In short, we're beginning to learn how to live in this new (temporary) normal. We're far from experts, but at least we know how to push-mow a lawn, so to speak.

And there are helpful external factors, as well. When this started, it still felt like cold, dark winter. But the sun is starting to peak out. I'm sitting on my back porch right now writing this, and the world looks a lot brighter than it did from within the four walls of my house. At work (yes, unlike many, I'm still working. Physical therapy is considered an essential business), we initially saw a drastic drop-off of patients, but that has leveled out, and it now seems likely that I'll be able to work in some capacity until things return to normal. And the precautions we're taking in the clinic (social distancing, increased sanitation and contact/droplet precautions) are starting to feel natural. So much so that they're becoming almost habitual.

In fact, the ways in which we're adapting—the things we're learning and realizing—may actually leave us in a better situation than we were before. Maybe we, as a culture, will learn (at least for a little while) to appreciate the little things. Maybe we'll be happy with the abundance of 21st century comforts that we're blessed with. Maybe we'll stop complaining when someone disagrees with us or when we can't buy the newest iPhone right away. Maybe annual influenza deaths will decrease now that the general public knows the value of hand washing. Maybe we'll learn how to spend more meaningful time at home with our families instead of seeking extravagant vacations and entertainment. In short, maybe we'll learn how to fix situations ourselves instead of expecting everyone else to do it for us.

As I said, humans are adaptable. We're built to learn and grow. We have an inherent ability to make lemons into lemonade. We forget that essential skill from time to time, but when push comes to shove, we never lose the skill completely. So keep making the most of your time. Use every moment of social distancing and quarantine to find creative hobbies and productive projects. And when the gates are opened once again, you'll be able to use the fruits of your labor in exciting new ways.

The effort is worth it, trust me. For example, my family has decided to benefit from the situation by going on a cruise next week for pennies on the dollar. Bon Voyage, suckers!

Oh, come on. You didn't think I was going to blog on April Fool's Day without taking advantage of it, did you? Stay safe and optimistic, y'all. And maybe give the rest of us some ideas by sharing the new projects you're working on here.

#covid-19 #quarantine #social distancing #adapting #hobbies #hobbyist #self-growth #aquascaping #flatten the curve #april fools #overcome #minimalism

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noctiferous-fr · 5 years

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can you do all the nitty gritty wb asks! :o

Oh my, sure!

This took longer than expected and is longer than expected sooo under the cut it goes!

1. How/why did your clan get it’s name?

Sylvhurst gets its name due to the large tree that the Rulers live in. It used to house the ‘soul’ or ‘essence’ of Queen Azraea until a spell went awry and she became a dragon. ‘Sylv’ and ‘hurst’ are both tree/forest words.

2. Are there any other clans living near by? Are they friendly or are they rivals? Tell us about their interactions with your clan.

The closest ‘clan’ would be the Seelie Court, which is about a day’s travel south. The Seelie Court and Sylvhurst are allies who trade and lend eachother support in times of need. Given that the Seelie Court has a hidden entrance and is generally not entirely open to outsiders, most of the interactions between the members of both clans happens within the boundaries of Sylvhurst, or in the unowned sections of the Tangled Wood.

3. What is your clan’s main source of income?

Probably the sale of magical goods and services. The Mage’s Quarter makes up a huge portion of the city, and there’s a good variety of magical beings each offering up their own unique type of magic.

4. What items does your clan have to import from other flights/clans/etc? Who is in charge of that?

The biggest import is building materials, despite the fact that Sylvhurst is in the middle of a forest. Because of Queen Azraea’s origin story, very few buildings in the town are made of wood, and it’s actually fairly difficult to get permission to build houses out of it. Instead, stone buildings are far more common (much to the joy of the magic users who find stone much more receptive to any spells they attempt to place on their residence).

5. Does your clan produce any sort of item coveted by other clans? Specialty items, services, food/drink?

Sorta in relation to #3, I’d say maybe Perseus’s enchanted items would be one of the more popular items for sale in Sylvhurst. They’re notoriously reliable and he has a myriad of spells that he can place on all sorts of items.

6. Is you clan independent or is it ruled by another governing body?

My clan is independent in the sense that Syvhurst is ruled by itself I guess?

7. Is your clan religious? Is there a single dominating religion or belief system in your clan or is it relaxed about different faiths?

All forms of religion are welcomed into Sylvhurst, though those who are fanatics may find some strange looks and whispers their way. For the festivals Sylvhurst dresses itself up and has a huge celebration for whichever God the festival is for.

8. What sort of superstitions do many in your clan believe? Is there any merit to it, or is it just wives tales?

There’s plenty of superstitions concerning the forest surrounding Sylvhurst, and most of it actually does have merit. There’s been plenty of legends about a mysterious young hatchling with glowing eyes who guides lost hatchlings back to their parents. Or about a ghost who seems to show up before deaths or disasters, wringing his hands in worry. Or even stories about a cheerful young man who can be helpful one second and a thief the next, and what to keep on hand to give him in return for his aid.

9. Any serious taboos?

Queen Azraea has been known to welcome all sorts of dragons into her clan, and even offer second chances to dragons who have done some fairly illegal things. The one crime that is expressly forbidden within Sylvhurst, however, is slavery or any form of trafficking. Any slavers moving through the territory are liable to be targeted and either killed or escorted out of the lands once their prisoners have been released.

10. How is your clan operated? Is there a single leader, a council, or something else?

Queen Azraea and King Arguim (technically) have final say on decisions made for the entirety of Sylvhurst, but they employ a fair number of advisors on different matters. Trickmurk is the tactician who is technically the immediate supervisor of the Guards. Iravat, while being the main advisor is also the leader of a smaller and more elite force that is targeted to more ‘high danger’ targets (Think Emperor level danger). Undine is another important person who oversees the docks to the west and enforces import and export restrictions. For the most part these advisors are able to rule over their own sectors without the Queen and King stepping in and overriding their rulings.

11. How is food stocked, stored and inventoried for rations during the lean times? Is there a specific dragon in charge of that?

Huh... I actually don’t have an answer for this. I would assume that the process would start with Undine at the docks, and she would begin to enforce export restrictions on anyone attempting to ship food out to make money. Then, she’d likely attempt to reach out to contacts and attempt to acquire more shipments of food. If it got really bad the treasurer, Aurelius, would most likely be brought in to sequester a portion of his vault for dried / salted portions of food.

12. How are your clans defenses operated?

Sylvhurst has a few defenses, but not many because of its somewhat secluded location and relatively few threats that they have dealt with so far. One of the largest defenses is a ‘shield’ that is controlled by Harlequin, which essentially ‘steers’ malicious people away from Sylvhurst and sends an alert of the location. It acts as a sort of suggestion -- and it is by no means going to turn someone around who is actively attempting to reach Sylvhurst. It’s more to try and prevent random people from stumbling into town and causing trouble.

Other than that, there are a number of guards who are stationed at the roads that enter and leave the city. This does leave the wooded areas without defenses, however, because there simply aren’t enough guards to actually surround the city.

13. How is waste removed from the clan?

Can I pull a JK Rowling and say it’s just magically vanished

I’m not sure! Waste such as packaging and trash is likely somewhat rare within Sylvhurst. Many things are reused and even bones from things like fish can be sold to vendors within the magical quarters for a small amount of money. Maybe any left over trash is incinerated?

14. Does your clan have livestock of any kind?

Not within the walls of the city itself, no. However there are a number of farms that have carved their way along the roads leading into town and while most of them are crop farms there are a few that also have various types of livestock.

15. How is water managed in the clan?

Water is collected for use in a number of ways. Almost every house in Sylvhurst has some form of a rain barrel (either for drinking water or for use in spells) which is the primary source for a number of people. There is a freshwater lake on the northern edge of the city which some people collect their water from as well. The ocean is another possibility, especially for those who live in the harbor area, as there are simple enchantments that can be used to turn the ocean water fresh and clean. Everyone handles their own water needs for the most part, barring of course businesses and inns which manage a much larger amount.

16. Is there a community hatchery/nursery, or do parents rear their young separately?

Parents rear young within their own homes, though there are nurseries which can look after hatchlings if something happens to their parents or if their parents cannot look after them all day long on their own.

17. Who teaches the younglings the basics?

The role of teaching is generally given to the parents, or, if they don’t feel comfortable it’s possible to find a mentor for the hatchling. The real basics of life are handled by the parents, but once they begin to branch out there are a number of tutors or mages that are happy to indulge the odd question from a child.

18. How does your clan view Exaltation? Is it an honor, banishment, something else?

Exaltation is more personal than anything. Most in Sylvhurst form their own opinions about it from their own experiences with family members and friends deciding on it. For most, exaltation is simply a journey a dragon takes when they decide that they wish to serve their god in any capacity. It’s definitely not a banishment, and it’s also not exactly an honor. It’s simply a different choice.

19. If your clan has a diverse number of dragons of different elements, how does that affect society? Are some dragons prejudiced against certain elements/breeds? How does the clan handle this?

Sylvhurst is a melting pot of every single element present on Sornieth. While Prejudice may occur behind the scenes, it is fairly obvious that overt prejudice will not be tolerated by the people of Sylvhurst or the King and Queen. Most of the conflicts seen in the clan are actually conflicts between dragons of the same element.

20. Are there Beast Clans near your clan? How does your clan interact with the Beast Clans?

Given the scope and mystery of the Tangled Wood I’d guess that there’s not-a-small amount of Beast Clans wandering near Sylvhurst. As of right now, no Beast Clans have taken up residence within the territory of the city, but they do stop by the marketplace or the docks more than occasionally.

21. Are there some Beast Clans that are allies and others that are enemies?

I don’t have any actual Beast Clan OCs or anything like that, but I like to think that Sylvhurst is a bit more friendly to Beast Clans than is regular for dragon clans. Many of them know the story of Azraea’s transformation and the dryads especially feel a kinship to her that they don’t feel towards dragons often.

22. Is your clan located near where the Emperor was sighted last? How is it preparing for that?

(I’m running on the assumption that the Emp was in Light territory because I don’t feel like looking it up lol). Sylvhurst is somewhat far from the border between Shadow and Light, so they’re not too concerned quite yet. The Queen and King aren’t doing many preparations other than the usual defenses. If it started moving closer, they might start taking preventative actions.

#Anonymous #clan: sylvhurst #long post 1003029120

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xtruss · 3 years

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The Upper Chilkat Valley, looking north, with the proposed Palmer site out of view to the left. Photograph: Ben Huff/The Guardian

A tiny Alaska town is split over a goldmine. At stake is a way of life

In Haines, where the salmon once leaped under snow-capped mountains, a massive mining project promises well-paid jobs – and threatens a fragile ecosystem

— By Dominic Rushe in Haines, Alaska | Tuesday June 22, 2021 | Guardian USA

For 2,000 years, Jones Hotch’s ancestors have fished Alaska’s Chilkat River for the five species of salmon that spawn in its cold, clean waters. They have gathered berries, hunted moose and raised their families, sheltered from the extremes of winter by the black, saw-toothed peaks of the Iron Mountain.

Now Hotch fears a proposed mining project could end that way of life.

Hotch has an infectious, boyish laugh – but there is no mistaking how worried he is about plans to build a mine where millions of pounds of zinc, copper, lead, silver and gold are buried, beneath the valleys’ mountains. We arejust miles from the headwaters of the Chilkat, the glacial river that serves as the main food source of the Tlingit, the region’s Indigenous people, as well as the inhabitants of Haines, the nearest port town.

“You guys might have your Safeway,” he says, waving his arm across the valley. “There’s ours all around here.”

Hotch, a tribal leader, lives in Klukwan, a village that takes its name from the Tlingit phrase “Tlakw Aan” – “the village that has always been”. It is the hub of an ancient trading route – later known as the Dalton Trail – that runs from Haines to Fort Selkirk in Canada.

Here in south-east Alaska, the consequences of the climate crisis are already visible. “Our mountains used to be snow-capped all year round,” Hotch said. “Two summers ago, our mountains were almost totally bare.” In Haines, hardware stores sold out of box fans because it was so hot.

King salmon – also known as Chinook – are in particular trouble. Haines’s popular annual fishing derby for largest species of Pacific salmon has been canceled, and now if anyone catches one, it must be released, in the hopes of encouraging their numbers.

“We need the snow to keep water cold for the salmon, for the summer blueberries,” says Hotch. Last year he saw fewer bumblebees, essential for pollination, and the blueberry crop was very disappointing. “I saw a bumblebee last week and I got real happy,” he laughs.

The mine, known as the Palmer Project, is still in the exploratory stage but financial control of the project was taken over by Dowa – a metals manufacturer and one of Japan’s largest companies – in a move that is seen as giving fresh impetus to the project.

If it gets approved, Hotch worries that contamination from the mine, located under the Saksaia glacier, could destroy the salmon runs they rely on. Even the exploration now under way could irreparably damage the fragile ecosystem, he believes, adding that the town would suffer too. Haines is heavily reliant on commercial salmon fishing, as well as tourism – each November, visitors flock to town to watch the largest convocation of bald eagles on the planet gorge on salmon.

“This project is a serious, significant threat facing our people,” says Hotch. “Some of the younger generation here now, they could say, ‘We were the last ones that were able to smoke fish, jar fish, pick blueberries,’” says Hotch. “We are working very hard to make sure no generation will have to say that.”

Jones Hotch, Klukwon elder on the banks of the Chilkat River with the village of Klukwon in the distance Photograph: Ben Huff/The Guardian

Mining has a long and storied history in the Chilkat Valley, stretching back all the way to the 1890s Klondike gold rush. Hopeful prospectors have been trying to strike it rich ever since Haines local Merrill Palmer – hence the name of the mine project – first laid claim to the site in 1969.

This year, plans to open operations finally took a significant step forward when Dowa took over the majority interest in the project from its Canadian partner, the exploration company Constantine.

“It is a decision by an investor, already highly invested, to put in additional money to further develop it and take control of the project,” Jim Kuipers, a Montana-based consultant, told the Chilkat Valley News. “Every year the project continues to get financed and ownership gets more consolidated it does become more likely to happen.”

Along the banks of the Chilkat, there are already signs of increased activity. The Haines highway is being extended to carry heavy trucks at higher speeds, and the state-run Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (Aidea) is proposing financing reconstruction of the town’s deepwater dock to include an ore dock that would make it easier to transport the bounty that the Constantine corporation believes the mine contains.

The economic turmoil triggered by the coronavirus has added impetus to the plans. The unemployment rate in Haines was over 14% in January. Meanwhile, copper prices have soared to record levels as large parts of the global economy emerge from pandemic lockdowns. The Palmer project would support 220 full-time jobs and 40 contractors, a significant boost to a town with a population of 1,863.

The Upper Chilkat Valley, looking north, with the proposed Palmer site out of view to the left. Photograph: Ben Huff/The Guardian

‘What we have here is special, not just for us but for the world’

For Gershon Cohen, a long-time Haines resident and project director of Alaska Clean Water Advocacy, rumblings that the mine may finally become a reality are “a nightmare”.

Cohen moved to Haines in 1984 and lives surrounded by trees in a beautiful wooden house he built himself – nothing out of the ordinary for Haines’s hardy, self-sufficient residents. On a walk to the shed he uses as his outside office, his wife suggests he gives me the “moose and the bear” talk. I joke I am a little old for that, but the dangers of the area’s two largest mammals are very real. Bears are likely to sniff you coming from a mile off and leave before you ever see them, but moose are easier to surprise and likely to trample you if spooked.

This is still a wild place. A record 40 grizzlies were killed in Haines last year, perhaps because poor fish runs and a bad berry season drove them into town looking for food (they have also been kept out of the local dump by an electric fence.) Bears, however, are smart – they have learned to open car doors to look for food and are not averse to breaking and entering houses.

Shannon Donahue: ‘Part of what makes this place so full of life is the robust salmon runs.’ Photograph: Ben Huff/The Guardian

“What we have here is very special, not just for us but for America and the world,” said Cohen. “There is a very real possibility that this mine will destroy the fisheries here. With the fish gone, there will be no eagles, no bears, no tourists. If this mine gets started it’ll be here for what? Ten years? What’s that against thousands of years of supporting this community?”

Haines and Klukwan are part of the Inside Passage, the longest and deepest fjord in North America and a place with a unique ecology. Cold, glacial freshwater meets the sea here, making it the perfect spawning ground for salmon and a critical corridor for bears, moose, lynx, coyote and snowshoe hares.

“Part of what makes this place so full of life is the robust salmon runs,” says Shannon Donahue, executive director of the Great Bear Foundation. The salmon transport nutrients from the ocean to the streams, they feed the bears and the eagles and their bodies feed the forest. But salmon are “pretty picky about their habitat,” she says.

Copper in particular can be catastrophic for them. Salmon can travel thousands of miles to return to the stream where they were born to die, using a smell memory bank to navigate one of the greatest migrations in the animal kingdom.

Metals leaked into streams can destroy the fish’s ability to find their way home, and“fugitive dust” shaken from trucks transporting extracted minerals can also contaminate the waterways, eventually building up to levels that can destroy the salmon’s unique homing abilities.

The mine’s supporters believe they can safely extract the Palmer Project’s riches. But even if they do, the mine’s “tailings” – the waste materials including millions of tonnes of contaminated water – will have to be managed forever.

For local opponents, one recent disaster comes to mind immediately. In 2014 the tailings at the Mount Polley goldmine in British Columbia failed, sending 24m cubic metres of mine waste into the local waterways.

The Palmer site sits on active earthquake faults and in an area prone to catastrophic landslides. Only last December, two people died and multiple houses were destroyed after record-breaking rainfall triggered a landslide in Haines, leaving a huge, brown scar on the hillside.

As he recounts the tragedy, Cohen shakes his head. “What could possibly go wrong?”

A seagull flies above hundreds of spawning chum salmon on a slough of the Chilkat River, just below the Tlingit village of Klukwan. Photograph: Peter Mather

‘It’s nerve-racking to even pick a side’

Alaska is heavily Republican and deeply pro-mining, but Haines is split on the project – and this includes the Native community, says local artist James Hart, a tribal council member of the Chilkoot Indian Association.

Hart is against the mine, but is wary of speaking out. “I am not a scientist, but I have seen what has happened in other places,” he says. “Worst-case scenario [is] it could potentially devastate and wipe out all of our salmon runs.”

Sharing that view in a small town where everyone knows everyone has consequences. “It’s nerve-racking to even pick a side or voice an opinion as a minority person,” he says. “The political climate in Haines makes it really hard.”

Hart’s mother has long been involved with tribal politics and and is another opponent of the mine. Recently people yelled at her in the street “just for having an opinion”, he says. “It’s not even an opportunity for having a dialogue, it’s just yelling because you have an opinion.” The incident made him more nervous for himself and his family.

James Hart, an artist and activist. Photograph: Ben Huff/The Guardian

Support for the project also runs deep. Jan Hill, Haines’s former mayor, is also Tlingit and a First Nations member of the Southern Tutchone. Her family has deep ties to the community and the project; Palmer was a friend of her parents.

“Mining is kind of in my blood,” she said. Her great grandparents came up to Alaska in 1898 from Washington state for the Gold Rush. “We have dealt with resource extraction in this community and it’s worked well for us. For the most part it is done responsibly and that’s what is important to all of us,” she said.

She points to Constantine hiring local people who can buy homes offering “good-paying summer jobs” for students and purchasing all the goods it can in Haines. And experts at Constantine offered help after the recent fatal landslide that would not have been available otherwise.“They stepped up immediately,” said Hill. “They are a part of our community.

“None of us want bad things to happen to our fish or any of the wildlife. We live a subsistence lifestyle here. We depend on our fish and moose, the bears and ducks – all the creatures that God gave us. We all have these concerns, but I believe Constantine is very responsible. They are very regulated, they are good stewards of the environment.”

Garfield MacVeigh, Constantine’s chief executive, says he listens closely to the community’s apprehension. “We hear and appreciate those concerns. All the work we are doing is to demonstrate that we won’t be a threat to the environment. If we can’t demonstrate that, you are not going to build the project,” he said.

He points to a similar-sized mine, Greens Creek silver mine near Juneau, about 80 miles as the eagle flies from Haines, which went into production in 1989 and has been operating for 32 years without any obvious impact on salmon.

Asked about Hotch’s concerns, he said: “I hear them, and as far as I am concerned they [the Tlingit] will be there for another 2,000 years, because we won’t take a risk that would result in any threat to the river environment.”

Many of the concerns about the impact of the mine were unscientific, he said, and comparisons to the Mount Polley catastrophe were “very misleading”.

“These days you are seeing virtually every project, anywhere, being contested. You have got the extreme group on one end contesting all of these things. They seem to become political rather than scientific. That’s their intent, to create noise around this and make it more and more political. The more extreme element doesn’t seem to be interested in the scientific data that may or may not justify the project,” he said.

Cohen dismissed MacVeigh’s comments, saying that there had been plenty of evidence, including from state reports , of high levels of pollution near Greens Creek.

‘Haines is definitely a divisive little town. But what doesn’t get said is a lot of people are very engaged,’ said Kyle Clayton. Photograph: Peter Mather

Holding strong opinions can be hard in a small community. Other Haines residents were happy to talk as long as they were promised anonymity. One said it was particularly hard for the younger generation to speak out. The pandemic recession hit the town hard and, given its isolation, life was already too expensive for many here. “My friends are moving away,” he said. “I’m lucky – I’m working. But I can’t afford to piss anybody off. Older people have less to lose.”

He suggested I go and check out how much a gallon of milk cost in the local supermarket. A gallon of 2% milk was $6.89 in Haines, while the national average in April was $3.58. Nearby, the supermarket was selling organic cucumbers for $2.29 a piece, compared with $1.49 in a Whole Foods in Brooklyn.

It’s not just the mine that divides Haines. The town has a long reputation for sharp-elbowed politics and bitter generational infighting.

Few people know that better than Kyle Clayton, publisher of the Chilkat Valley News. Trying to objectively cover the Palmer project is a hard task. “I piss everybody off,” says Clayton. “I’ve been called a lackey for the mine.”

A handsome 36-year-old, Clayton has the worried look of a peacemaker. “It comes from all directions. The good thing is that in a small town, you can talk to people and reach some kind of understanding.”

He dislikes the black or white nature of the debate. “There’s a lot of unknowns. It’s still a long way off from being a project,” he says. He wants to see more information before deciding whether he should take a side.

On his paper-strewn stand-up desk is a list of 22 questions to be asked of interviewees to “complicate the narrative”, to “amplify contradictions and widen the lens”. In this hyper-partisan age, he is determined the paper will try its hardest to be fair to both sides.

People warned Clayton of Haines’s reputation before he moved from Petersburg, another small Alaskan town south of Juneau. These days, he thinks it’s not so different from much of America. When he speaks to people back home, they tell him people there are at each other over face masks and Covid vaccinations.

“Maybe we just did it first?” he says. “Haines is definitely a divisive little town. But what doesn’t get said is a lot of people are very engaged,” he says.

As plans for the Palmer Project pick up, the community and the wider world is likely to get even more engaged – and enraged. The Biden administration recently banned drilling for oil and gas in Alaska’s Arctic national wildlife refuge. Alaska’s Republican governor, Mike Dunleavy, called it an “assault on Alaska’s economy”.

But the opposition to the mine may not come entirely from the left. Last year Donald Trump Jr, the former president’s son and a keen hunter and fisherman, joined opposition to the controversial Pebble mine at the headwaters of salmon-rich Bristol Bay. That project is now in jeopardy.

An eagle takes flight from a perch along the Chilkat River, in the Chilkat Bald Eagle preserve, 10km downstream from the Tlingit village of Klukwan during the fall chum salmon run. Photograph: Peter Mather

Hotch said his community would be fighting hard to make sure Merrill Palmer’s gold stays underground. No short-term gain is worth the risk involved, he said.

“There might be money for five, 10, 15 years and then they will leave for the next spot, wherever that is. And we here will have to live with the consequences of what they did to our lands.”

More than anything, he wants the way of life that has supported his people for 2,000 years to be protected.

“I long for the day we can stop having to do this and look at ways that the salmon can have a friendlier way swimming up river. That’s how we can help them. That’s my goal after we finish this battle. They have been helping us for generations. It’s the absolute least we can do.”

— This article was amended on 22 June to correct the spelling of Petersburg.

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cosimaballettithomas-blog · 5 years

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Blog No. 9

The topics of this week’s readings were Aquatic Biodiversity Loss/Extinction and Soil, Agriculture and Food, all of which are being impacted in one way or another by the unsustainable use and depletion of natural capital and ecosystem services. (Prof’s PowerPoint). Miller’s Chapter 11: Sustaining Aquatic Biodiversity addresses how aquatic species are threatened by human activity (Miller 2012, 251). Although we have only managed to explore roughly 5% of the oceans and only 1% of its life forms, scientists have detected three patterns that occur in the ocean: (1) Most marine biodiversity is concentrated in coral reefs and estuaries, as well as the ocean floor, (2) Biodiversity tends to be higher near coasts than open water “because of the greater variety of producers and habitats in coastal areas,” (3) Biodiversity is higher towards the bottom of the ocean as opposed to its surface again because of the array of habitats as well as the availability of more diverse sources of food (Miller 2012, 251). Coastal activity is particularly detrimental to oceans; for example, coral reefs are an essential safe haven for approximately 90% of fish species yet almost ⅕ of the world’s reefs have been destroyed by pollution and acidification, as well as development of the shore itself (Miller 2012, 252-253). That value is now outdated with the IPCC’s recent release of its “Summary for Policy Makers” which warned that coral reefs could disappear altogether within the next few decades (Milman 2017).

Freshwater aquatic zones are experiencing different yet equally dire destruction by processes such as dam construction and water withdrawal for irrigation. Another problem faced by aquatic areas are invasive species which “can displace or cause the extinction of native species and disrupt ecosystem services and human economies.” In fact, ⅔ of fish extinction in the United States has been caused by invasive species within the last hundred years or so (Miller 2012, 253). These species can be introduced in a number of ways; for example, “many arrive in the ballast water that is stored in tanks in large cargo ships to keep them stable. These ships take in ballast water, and whatever microorganisms and tiny fish species it contains, from one harbor and dump it into another” (253). These ships are now required to flush out their ballast water before entering a harbor, but invasive species nonetheless are transported such as by sticking to the body of a ship. This just goes to show how important effective and strict environmental law and policy are in the protection of biodiversity.

Miller explains that protecting marine biodiversity has proven somewhat difficult, one reason being that “much of the damage to the oceans and other bodies of water is not visible to most people” (260). Another reason is that people see the oceans “as an inexhaustible resource that can absorb an almost infinite amount of waste and pollution.” Clearly, as explicated in the trailer for “Albatross” about the garbage in the Pacific, this is not the case, we just can’t see the waste and pollution because so much of it is in the bodies of animals (Albatross). Lastly, and perhaps most problematic, “most of the world’s ocean area lies outside of legal jurisdiction of any country” making it for the most part a free for all, similar to the concept of the “Tragedy of the Commons” which describes how, when land is common, people will tend to deplete it by overconsumption; however, when land becomes privatized, land owners will tend to take better care it since it is their land” (Miller 2012, 260).

Another way to move away from the tragedy of the commons outcome and encourage people to protect aquatic biodiversity is through economic incentive. Miller describes a case study a 2004 study conducted by the World Wildlife Fund that found that “sea turtles are worth more to local communities alive than dead” due to the revenue that sea turtle tourism creates that is “three times more than the sale of turtle products such as meat, leather, and eggs” (261). Thus, informing and educating people about the economic benefits of protecting their native wildlife and essentially feeding into the anthropocentric ideology could actually prove beneficial.

That said, in response to Miller’s Critical Thinking Question #9 of this chapter, the first important point of my policy that I would use to protect the world’s aquatic biodiversity is that we serve to benefit more in the long run by preserving animals than killing and selling them for profit (Miller 2012, 276). Secondly, because it has proven so difficult to divide and establish authority over international waters, I would create an entire department of defense geared towards biodiversity preservation and a sub-branch that is entirely assigned to water bodies to carry out the laws and exercise authority that forms the basis of my third policy implementation which would be to ban all hunting, poaching, and trading of marine species as a fully encompassing way of protecting them that resolves any confusion about who has right to which part of the ocean in that no one would under my authority. I don’t think scientists have a good enough reason to want to explore the oceans, unless of course it is for the purpose of protecting marine species. We have already degraded enough of the planet and there are few reasons compelling enough to cause any more harm.

Miller’s Chapter 12: Food, Soil, and Pest Management addresses the issue of food security and why, despite the fact that we have more than enough food, people are still going hungry (Miller 2012, 278). This divide can only grow with increasing global temperature rise and its impacts such as drought leading to more frequent and intense periods of food shortages i.e. famine (Miller 2012, 279). This in turn will displace more people thus exacerbating the issue of congestion and overcrowding as people are forced to immigrate. Another issue posed to the food supply is the consequences of specialization that “puts us in a vulnerable position should any number of the small number of crop strains, livestock breeds, and fish and shellfish species we depend on disappear as a result of factors such as disease, environmental degradation, and climate change” (Miller 2012, 281). Miller furthers that this violates the principle of sustainability that addresses biodiversity in that we have no “ecological insurance policy for dealing with changes in environmental conditions” given our limited food source variety (281).

There are two major types of agriculture, industrialized and subsistence. The former uses heavy equipment and lots of resources such as capital, water, fossil fuels, and commercial fertilizers/pesticides to produce monocultures which are single crop types grown for the purpose of bolstering yield (281). This form of agriculture uses 25% of global cropland and occurs largely in developed countries, producing roughly 80% of the global food supply (Miller 2012, 281). Subsistence agriculture on the other hand is done by individuals producing only what they need to support themselves or their community. Another types of agriculture is slash-and-burn which involves the burning of tropical forests for the purpose of clearing land away in order to use it intensely until the soil is becomes infertile and the land is left to restore itself, which can take decades (283). This process, as well as agriculture in general is incredibly detrimental to soil, especially topsoil, which takes centuries to regenerate (284). Topsoil erosion can have two results, the first being fertility loss “through depletion of plant nutrients in topsoil” and water pollution “in nearby surface waters, where eroded topsoil ends up as sediment,” which kills animals and clogs water bodies (Miller 290). Soil can also erode naturally by wind and water, especially in regions with high rainfall, which explains why rainforests have very infertile soil, despite sustaining such high biodiversity (289).

The Green Revolution began in the 1950’s with the rapid increase in global food production due to high-input industrialized agriculture to bolster crop yields (Miller 2012, 283). The Green Revolution is also marked by an increase in efficiency and crop yield without the need for more land, which has been beneficial in keeping large forest land in the U.S. from being cultivated for agriculture (285). The major downfall, however, is the massive amount of fossil fuel combustion both during the production and transportation of goods (288). The Green Revolution is also responsible for a large amount of waste, pollution, environmental hazards, and public health problems (Prof’s PowerPoint).

A pest, according to Miller, “is any species that interferes with human welfare by competing with us for food, invading lawns and gardens, destroying building materials, spreading disease, invading ecosystems, or simply being a nuisance” (297). There are many natural pest controls such as spiders that kill more insects than humans; however, deforestation and agriculture that uses chemicals to clear land upsets this natural balance, forcing us to create artificial and less effective pest control methods (Miller 2012, 297). This is just one more example of how we simply cannot replicate natural ecosystem processes. Other disadvantages of synthetic pesticides include the acceleration of genetic resistance to pesticides by pests that breed at rapid rates and can develop and inherit immunity through natural selection. Moreover, because of this genetic resistance, farmers will have to spend more money on new forms of pesticides (299). Lastly, synthetic pesticides are not sedentary and can pollute surrounding land by spreading through the air, water, or even unintentionally to wildlife and humans. On the other hand, the advantages are that pesticides can save lives, help increase food supply, increase profits, etc. (Miller 2012, 299).

An Environmental News Network article titled “Using the Sun and Agricultural Waste to Control Pests” discusses an alternative to synthetic pesticides using ‘bio solarization,’ a process that combines solar energy with soil amendments to manage weeds and other soil-borne pests” (ENN 2019). This is a zero-waste process that takes “low-value byproducts of crop production,” i.e. food waste such as skins and hulls and adding it to the soil to promote good bacterial growth which in turn increases soil acidity making it inhospitable to many weeds and pests. This is in addition to regular solarization which involves laying a clear plastic tarp over soil to trap radiation (pictured below) and heat the soil effective killing weeds and pests. This process takes several weeks, so by adding the food waste, farmers can reduce soil treatment time to just a few days. This pest management method eliminates the need for synthetic pesticides and produces no waste in that, besides the plastic tarp, it uses recycled materials that would have otherwise gone to waste. Moreover, it’s an excellent example of how industrial agriculture can reduce its environmental impact and integrate sustainability into its operation (ENN 2019).

(ENN 2019)

Word Count: 1782

Discussion Question: Do you think it is important that we explore the deep ocean, even if it means interfering with the life and natural processes there?

Work Cited

Miller, Tyler G., and Scott Spoolman. "Chapter 11: Sustaining Aquatic Biodiversity." Edited by Scott Spoolman. In Living in the Environment. 17th ed. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning, 2012.

Van Buren, Edward. “Prof’s PowerPoint Notes.” https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzKbjVLpnX0RMjVGYUwwZlBXa28/view

Milman, Oliver. "Scientists Warn US Coral Reefs Are on Course to Disappear within Decades." The Guardian. May 30, 2017. Accessed April 24, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/30/us-coral-reefs-global-warming-climate-change.

Miller, Tyler G., and Scott Spoolman. "Chapter 12: Food, Soil, and Pest Management." Edited by Scott Spoolman. In Living in the Environment. 17th ed. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning, 2012.

"Albatross." Albatross. https://www.albatrossthefilm.com/.

University of California Davis. "Using the Sun and Agricultural Waste to Control Pests." Environmental News Network. January 09, 2019. https://www.enn.com/articles/56373-using-the-sun-and-agricultural-waste-to-control-pests.

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your-dungeon-is-problematic · 7 years

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Selkies (AD&D)

Selkies! Everybody’s favorite Celtic seal-women! ...Well, they’re usually women, anyway. Women who put on sealskins that transform them into seals. Unless they’re seals that remove their skins to transform themselves into humans? Bit of a chicken-or-egg dilemma there. Though something I cannot ignore right now is that the art in this edition for selkies is nothing short of hideous. Lemme tell you, the weird misshapen webbed hands, the tiny legs coming out of that squat flat butt, that face, it’s just so unappealing. All you had to do was draw a seal, and then like some tasteful shot of a woman draped in a sealskin right next to it, with the connect between them fairly implicit, not this weird not-quite-one-not-quite-the-other look y’all got going on.

General: “Selkies are seal-like beings that have the ability to change into human form for a few days at a time.” ...A few days? That’s it? What for? In most selkie stories I’ve ever heard about, yes, the selkie does eventually return to her seal form, but it’s more just that she has this innate desire to be free and in the sea, whereas this seems to imply some kind of like...physical limitation? Is this an Animorphs situation? Will the selkie become human permanently if they’re in human form for more than a week? “When in their true, seal-like forms, they are nearly indistinguishable from normal seals. Close inspection of their arms, however, will reveal the presence of slightly webbed hands instead of fore flippers and legs instead of a tapering body and rear flippers.” Yeah, “Close inspection”, my ass. The structure of those grody hands are pretty markedly and immediately distinguished from a regular seal flipper. The only time this guy wouldn’t get weird looks was if the water was murky. And even then, most people who got a good look would be all, “poor dear, it’s got malformed flippers”. And the legs, just... no, that’s pretty much entirely different from a seal’s legs. It gives the body an entirely different profile. The selkies will look like potbellied swimmers in wetsuits from a distance, only for people to think they’re just really misshapen seals for whom every waking moment of life is agony with their accursed limb deformities. And then someone will probably be like, “Oh wait, they’re probably just selkies.” Like I really don’t think this was the best way to go for this creature, guys. You should have given them a regular seal form, and a regular human form; this half-and-half thing they got going on is nothing short of disturbing. And like, there can still be telltale signs in either form that this is no ordinary human/seal, like maybe some kind of special birthmark, or maybe selkies in human form are notably hefty, because the seal blubber doesn’t just disappear when the sealskin comes off, but this ain’t the way I’d go, with the limbs, and...yeesh. “Once a month, each selkie is able to assume human form for about a week. Usually selkies prefer to briefly visit the realm of men (which they call the ‘overworld’) out of curiosity, but sometimes they are ordered to go forth and purchase desperately needed supplies or information.” I’m still weirded out by the timescale provided, here. That doesn’t seem long enough. A week per month? But at least the reasons given for why they go to the surface are certainly reasonable. For fun, when it isn’t for food or information. Simple but not stupid. “When in human form, selkies are very attractive indeed and their fine looks have broken more than a few overworlders’ hearts. Their eyes are particularly noticeable as they are always either a bright emerald green or startling light blue. Since the selkie transformation is not a spell or magical effect, only spells like true seeing will reveal a selkie’s true nature, although their peculiar mannerisms and predilection for seafood also might.” I like this, honestly. Unless you know to look for the eyes, or if they’re really, really not good at blending in with the surface-dwellers, selkies are hard to suss out. Adds an air of mystery when the party’s benefactor only shows up a week every month and insists on holding meetings at the local crab shack. And then someone makes the connection and all the eccentricities click.

Combat: “Since selkies are unable to swim quickly while carrying weapons, 90% of selkies encountered underwater will be unarmed. They use their sharp teeth whenever they are cornered but prefer to use their impressive speed underwater to escape superior odds. If encountered on land, selkies are wise enough to bear human weapons, most likely swords scavenged from the wrecks of ships.” ...Nothing much to add, really. It’s all fairly sensible. Seriously, selkies are hard to make unlikable, to me.

Habitat/Society: “Selkie communities are divided between male and female, with females usually outnumbering males, as male selkies are he hunter/gatherers throughout the often dangerous waters nearby.” Ugh, I say that and they immediately fall into the same bizarre job dichotomy the centaurs did... “However, both aspects of selkie “community” (domestic and provider) are equally respected within the lair, and no sex is accorded undue privileges.” Oh! Well, that’s good at least. You immediately caught yourselves, selkies. Don’t disappoint me, now. “Selkies inhabit only colder waters and there are both saltwater and freshwater varieties. Selkies almost always build their lairs in water-filled regions--selkie young must be raised in an air-filled environment for about their first year.” Huh! Well that’s...interesting, I suppose? “As mentioned earlier, selkies often find and explore wrecks of sunken treasure. Most selkie communities have hoarded at least some booty (especially pearls), keeping those otherwise useless trinkets only for purposes of trade with the overworld.” This is one of those times where again I’m like “then what the fuck else do they have for currency, unless they have some sort of barter system or communistic command economy type thing going on?” I mean, okay, yeah, a lot of times in an emergency situation when it comes right down to it, money doesn’t *do* anything...but in day-to-day situations, you exchange it for goods and services! How ‘bout that shit! You use it for trade, but it’s otherwise useless? ...Well yeah, guys, it’s money, that is its use. Like, duh. I know you’re trying to make a little bit of a hippy-dippy “they’re like, beyond money, maaaan!” sort of statement, but it comes off to me like you’ve just said “they use money” in the most roundabout way possible. Granted, they only use money with surface-worlders, and that does leave gaping holes in how their society works, but whatever. “Only selkies who have visited the overworld many times have ever acquired a taste for ornamenting themselves like overworlders, and can be distinguished from more traditional selkies immediately. For obvious reasons, these more experienced selkies are often the best representatives to deal with if one is an overworlder. Selkies can be hired and have a limited knowledge of overworlder culture.” Of course, the whole fact that there are more surface-experienced selkies out there, kind of raises the question as to what one of these selkies would do in the fairly-typical-in-the-old-tales scenario where their sealskin was stolen. ...Though, that said, hold on: where are their transformative sealskins? I don’t think I’ve seen anything in this passage that more than vaguely hints in the direction of their traditional, mythological means of going from one form to another. Which is frankly bizarre. Why even have selkies if you’re not going to include the sealskins...? “All magical treasure recovered by selkies is immediately commandeered for the good of the community and the lair’s defense.” Ah, so they at least have some sort of community militia, outfitted with the best salvaged magical loot. Good! This is a good thing. I like it.

Ecology: “Selkies are omnivorous, preferring to eat fish, shellfish, crustaceans, and various forms of seaweed. Those that have visited the surface are often partial to human fare as well. Selkies are particularly suceptible to fine wine, which is to be expected since these intoxicants are unknown below the seas.” I mean I guess that makes sense? I just fear that too much wine will like, get some landlubbers who’ve caught onto the whole selkie society to start economically exploiting the selkies by selling them wine, and... Eh, you see where I’m going. But like I said, it makes sense, to me. “Selkies are sensitive about their environment and harvest only what they need to survive. It is worth noting that selkie representatives lobby heavily whenever local overworlder environmental issues threaten selkie existence. Most selkie communities have learned the value of dropping a few pearls here and there in order to get what they want from men.” Well, they’re a cut above the centaurs by actually trying to actively influence human environmental policy through financial incentives. Being the change they want to see in the world, and all that. “While selkies in human form are quite beautiful, they are fortunate indeed that their pelts have little value in overworlder markets. They are, therefore, without any special enemies besides those common to seals and all ocean-dwelling beings.” ...Huh. You know, it’s weird, but I think that is the first, last, and only mention of the whole selkie pelt thing, and even then the fact that its tied to their transformation is only implied. So if you had no idea what a selkie was coming into this, I guess you’re going to be a tad confused where this note about the pelt is even coming from. Also is this meant to be a subversion of the common selkie narrative of “selkie in human form gets stuck that way when some prick takes her pelt and forces her to marry him” thing? Like “Oh, uh, seal pelts aren’t worth much, so, uh, you don’t gotta worry, or nothing.” It’s weird.

Selkie, Leader: “Each venerable leader of a selkie community can cast the following spells once per day, one spell per round: augury, cure light wounds, and cure disease. Leaders can also cast weather summoning and control weather once per week. Selkies fear the wrath of the sea should they ever use their powers for ill.” ...Wait, all selkies need to do to get these spells is to...get old? Or do they need to both be old and be generally accepted as a leader of their community? I do like the sort of ominous warning at the end there. It almost implies like, a wrathful sea god, or something, who will totally Odyssey you for a decade if you screw with him.

Overall: ...I like ‘em! You know, it’s weird that the whole pelt transformation is only even implied just the one time in the text, but they seem pretty placid and agreeable. Totally unlike the centaurs from last time, geez. Really my biggest critique is that their seal form is ugly as all hell. Look at that thing. Honestly. Just, draw a seal, have them be a seal in seal form. They won’t be able to use weapons, but seals got big ol’ teeth, you guys. They’ll be fine.

#selkies #selkie #dungeons & dragons #your dungeon is problematic #though not so much this time around #selkies are pretty chill #thank God #for once what should be innocuous remains innocuous #though that art...#hrm

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narelleart · 7 years

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On the care of the Asian Bumblebee Catfish, Pseudomystus siamensis

The fish I am most well versed in the care of is my favorite fish, the “Asian Bumblebee Catfish”, Pseudomystus siamensis. They aren't the most commonly kept fish, but not actually all that uncommon of an import, so pretty readily obtainable.

First, a disclaimer: [There are many catfish referred to as simply “Bumblebee Catfish” in the aquarium trade. Please make sure you have the right one! I would be happy to ID for you if you aren’t sure. This information does not at all apply to any other species of “bee”, please research those elsewhere!]

Scientific Name: Pseudomystus siamensis [I highly recommend doing all further research on these fish by using their scientific name. Given the confusion in the hobby about the various “bumblebee catfish”, it is especially important to try to narrow down your searches as much as possible to avoid confusing information about the other “bees” with information about your actual fish. Even so, do be wary that not everyone with a “bee” has it properly identified, so some might slap the wrong scientific name on their fish as well. This species will really put you to the test in your ability to be discriminating in your research!]

Max Size: 5.9″ SL, 150mm SL [“SL” stands for “Standard Length”, meaning the length of the fish from the tip of its “nose” to the base of the tail. This means that if you include those long tail fins, adults of this species can exceed 6″ in length! But this is a maximum size, so not every P. siamensis will get quite this big, just as not every human reaches 6 or 7ft. Still, you don’t know what level of growth your fish is capable of, so it is best to plan for it to reach its maximum size!]

Minimum Tank Size: 40g “long” or “breeder” (single specimen tank only, larger for a community) [This fish is very active at night, and needs to be able to “stretch its fins” so to speak. They are not small fish, so it is important to give them space to move relative to their potential full size. Read more here about how I calculate minimum tank size. Also keep in mind that, as with all fish, it is best to aim beyond minimums whenever possible! More here on the meaning of minimum tank size, and why we should always aim higher.]

Habitat: Chao Phraya and Mekong River basins [These fish originate from the Chao Phraya and Mekong river basins, meaning relatively deep water compared to the standard aquarium, and moderate flow. They do prefer to spend most of their time out of the highest flow, as they would naturally hide in driftwood tangles and the like along the floor of these rivers and their tributaries, so they can be comfortably housed in a well filtered but otherwise fairly standard tank set up. While they are easy fish that would tolerate a wide variety of aquarium conditions, enterprising aquarists wishing to create a more biotopic habitat for this species could create a beautiful river tank with driftwood tangles, plants, and areas of varied flow that would be perfect for these beautiful “bees”. This fish’s native habitat does experience a dry season and a monsoon season, so those truly dedicated to mimicking the natural environment could copy these seasonal changes as well.]

Water Requirements: pH: 5.8 - 7.8 Temp: 68 - 78.8F, 20 - 26C Hardness: 4 - 20 dH [P. siamensis comes from soft, acidic water and would fare best housed in conditions as close to that as possible, but these fish are remarkably hardy. They can withstand even the worst beginner mistakes, so for those with an interest in them and room to provide adequate conditions, they would actually make excellent fish for the inexperienced fish keeper. This is seen in their ability to survive in their native river systems, which are becoming increasingly polluted.]

Diet: Predatory Carnivore [P. siamensis is primarily carnivorous, but not exclusively. Gut content analysis done in a survey by the Mekong River Commission (pg. 94 of this pdf) lists that stomachs of this species contained “insects, aquatic insect larvae, including odonatans, fish and large crustaceans, earthworms, snails, roots, fruits and detritus”. These fish would do best on a varied diet high in insect based protein sources. They are also remarkably adaptable in terms of diet, however, and readily accept prepared foods, so meeting their dietary needs in home aquaria is not at all difficult.]

Compatibility: Predatory, Territorial with Consepecifics [This species has a bad reputation of being hard to place with tankmates, but I would argue that it is not all that well deserved. Tankmates do need to be chosen with some care, but not to the extremes that most would recommend. P. siamensis is a predatory fish, so tankmates small enough to be eaten are likely to become prey for this fish. Safest are fish that are no smaller than half the cat’s maximum size, in this case 3 inches or larger, and as well deeper bodied fish are less likely to be preyed upon, though sufficiently sized torpedo shaped fish would still fare well. Many would call this fish “aggressive”, but I would argue that’s not the case. They are aggressive to “conspecifics”, or any fish similar enough in shape or color to the cat that they might feel threatened by it, but that is the extent of their aggressive behavior. Paired with dissimilar fish too large to be eaten, and with care taken to make sure food is reaching the cat so it doesn’t feel hungry enough to get desperate, P. siamensis is a model community tank citizen.]

Behavior: Active, Nocturnal [This fish is nocturnal, so throughout the day it will spend almost all of its time hiding out in a favorite hiding spot. These fish absolutely require appropriate hiding spaces that provide a completely dark space when the tank is fully lit, and show a preference for wood over stone or artificial decorations, though they will accept anything that is dark enough. You will rarely catch a glimpse of this fish during the day, when it will seem very shy and reclusive, but at night they are very active and will take advantage of all provided space to move. Over time, they can be trained to come out in the evening or early morning for food, which gives you the chance to observe and appreciate this beautiful fish more often. Unfortunately, without such training, this is the kind of fish that you could almost forget you have, because they hide so well in the daytime. To truly get to appreciate this beautiful species, the aquarist needs to put in a little extra work with their fish, but those times you do get to see them are all the more rewarding for it. For me, P. siamensis has proven to be an intelligent, personable fish able to recognize its owner.]

Sexing and Reproduction: Easy, Not yet accomplished [P. siamensis is very easy to sex, especially in mature specimens. Males have an elongate genital papillae right in front of their anal fin, which looks like a short white protrusion sometimes laying against the foremost edge of the fin. (Reference picture here.) Females lack this papillae, and when mature will have their body cavities wildly distort when they are ripe with eggs. P. siamensis has yet to be intentionally bred in home aquaria (there is one report of an accidental spawning) though this is likely due to a lack of interest and few concerted efforts being made. This fish is usually either wild caught, or bred in mass spawning pools where many fish are dumped in together to spawn naturally without human intervention, and groups of fish are later harvested.]

Overall, P. siamensis is an extremely hardy, adaptable fish. For those with an interest that can provide adequate conditions and don’t mind their reclusive daytime behavior, I would highly recommend this gorgeous catfish species. My Dexter has a special place in my heart, as the fish that really got me invested in my tanks and learning proper care, and also as my gateway fish to my obsessions with catfish and SE Asian freshwater fishes! It’s ultimately because of him that I’ve found my passion in life and am now pursuing my dream of being an Ichthyologist.