WaterNotes

Inspired by a Goldfish

I named my first pet goldfish “Spanky”. His moniker reflected my mischievous disposition and behavior as a child rather than my parents’ sense of humor. A gift on my second birthday, the little fish helped me fall asleep at night and taught me clandestine lessons in observation and responsibility. At dinnertime, I remarked on the color of his scat and the missing scales on his body. I authoritatively tutored my grandparents in changing the water in his bowl. I bragged about his beauty and intelligence to my friends across the street.

Yet I don’t remember the little fish for any of these reasons. Instead, I remember his last moments in the vivid details and colors attached to pivotal memories. Eight months after my birthday, I decided I had grown up enough to gain command of Spanky’s food bottle. I shook out its entire contents into the bowl with great conviction and satisfaction. I watched Spanky consume flake after flake of food from the slurry of flotsam suffocating his little home.

Did you know that gorging goldfish explode? Until Spanky self-destructed, I hadn’t known that truth either. I remained unexpectedly undisturbed by his passing even as I witnessed his journey to the afterlife through the toilet bowl. Instead, I remained fascinated with the memory of him eating an enormous quantity of food. Though I already occupied the annoying Why stage of childhood questions, I grew more curious after the accident. Ultimately, Spanky’s demise set me up for a lifelong obsession with fish and nature.

Throughout my childhood, I developed my sense of natural literacy by playing in streams, ponds, and meadows. I pulled the tails off anoles long before I learned the advantages of such an adaptation. I hiked trails in Pennsylvania and Delaware and hunted beryl, mica, and quartz rocks during the climbs. I raised tadpoles into tree frogs and a bristling army of caterpillars into painted lady butterflies. I kept aquariums full of fish fed on my sister’s SeaMonkeys and watched them court mates and defend territories. I even learned basic concepts in chemistry and nutrient cycling from the water quality of the aquariums.

Above all, I learned the value of firsthand experience and felt the effects of it as a confidence in my abilities and my knowledge about biology. While I enjoyed Wild America on PBS and read Zoobooks, my connection to nature remained tactile. These experiences directed me towards a career in science and encouraged a sense of responsibility that still influences my decisions as an adult. Eventually, I realized that a career in environmental education, a structured type of natural literacy, fit into my passions and experience.

These days, I fondly recall Spanky when I share my knowledge of fish and nature with children on field trips at zoos and public aquariums. My favorite programs include fieldwork that enables students to learn their own firsthand knowledge of nature. I teach them to dip net and seine, to avoid stingrays, and identify their catch. I attempt to inspire an appreciation for wildlife in these students by weaving information about each species into tales full of delight.

“Croaking drumfish may successfully call for mates in murky water, but the sounds also attract hungry pods of dolphin like a ringing dinner bell.”

“Breeding fish use many strategies for protecting their babies. While many species build nests, seahorses and pipefish incubate the eggs in pouches on their bodies almost like kangaroos. The aptly named mouth-brooders gargle the eggs in their mouths to keep them away from hungry predators.”

“Tarpon, like the Bettas you might keep in jars at home, can breathe air to survive the low-oxygen waters in a mangrove swamp.”

I coach my students in the lost art of natural literacy and in the relationships of fish and other wildlife to the ecosystem. I encourage them to observe the world minutely and to focus on the stories in nature. I teach them a unique way to employ their senses in interpreting a lost language from the wild. With this skill they develop a connection to a world more real than any video game and full of more mystery than The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Like other essential life skills, natural literacy builds throughout the life of a person as they acquire new techniques and experiences. Even now, I follow brown pelicans with binoculars to locate boiling water and hunting dolphin. I navigate mangrove islands on long kayak paddles by following schools of fish. I discern osprey from red-shouldered hawks and point out the faint differences between the species to my students.

In the future, I hope to share the ability to read nature and continue teaching environmental education. Since unstructured time had the greatest influence on me, I may encourage campers and field trip students to return to and explore areas we visit with their families. I will certainly continue to use natural literacy to provide examples that explain complex ideas in science.

For example, the concentration of pink carotenoids in the feathers of flamingoes and spoonbills elegantly illustrates the idea of bioaccumulation. This observation can lead to a discussion of the food chain and, later, the bioaccumulation of nefarious pesticides like DDT. It can lead further into a lesson on conservation and the role of citizens in environmental policy.

A simple pink feather inspires so much information that I often think all education should incorporate natural literacy. Language arts students could write sonnets about birds in flight. Art students could sculpt waterfalls from clay or make tile mosaic birdbaths. Plotting heights of trees in stages of succession on graphs and estimating miles traveled by tagged gopher tortoises might enliven math problems.

Perhaps in a future full of naturally literate children and adults, who act on a sense of responsibility for nature, we will have cleaner air and healthier ecosystems. Perhaps we will not lose endangered species such as red wolves and indigo snakes. Perhaps we will retain more knowledge about countries and geography by investigating the natural places other cultures inhabit. And perhaps, we will raise better artists, scientists, carpenters, accountants, and engineers if we teach them to read the natural world.