Of fires and fish

Walking down to the beach I notice a cigarette butt on the ground. It’s in the middle of the bitumen path. At first I’m annoyed by the littering but quickly a greater annoyance takes over. The butt has a little crown of ash. It has not been crushed. I’m no detective but clearly it was dropped still burning. The littering might annoy me; the idea of someone dropping a burning cigarette butt infuriates me. By the time I get to the beach I’m seething. At the bottom of the stairs I see a woman I know. “I just saw a cigarette butt on the path,” I rant by way of hello. “Clearly dropped while it was burning. Who does that? It was on the path but, seriously, the bush is tinder dry. All it had to do was roll to the side and whoosh!” My friend nods. We are of a mind on this.

To put this in context, as we are having this conversation, fire crews are mopping up a bushfire that sparked the previous day (which was New Year Day). It’s the middle of fire season. A hot day forecast. Wind blowing. Awful fire-fighting conditions. Fires only burn if they are ignited. Lightning strikes. Arson. Carelessness. Carelessness such as a cigarette butt dropped in the coastal heath as someone walks down to the beach. Or by a slasher hitting a rock in a paddock, as the New Year Day fire was; careless because the slashing should have been done two months ago, not on a warm January day with an easterly blowing.

I finish ranting to my friend, dump my bag on the beach and head off for a walk. I come across someone else I know. I’m still seething, so I rant again. “People just have no idea,” she says. I nod and walk on. Breathe, Jill. Breathe.

The pair of pied oystercatchers and the chick they hatched a month or so ago are near the dunes. The chick is already almost indistinguishable from the parents. Until one parent runs up with a long marine worm, pulled from the wet sand as the water drains back to the sea. The juvenile squawks and squawks until the adult shoves the worm down its throat.

The water is crystal clear. I can see the dirt under my toenails as I walk into the water. I swim, watching the world beneath as I breathe through my snorkel. I’m still frustrated by my lack of knowledge of fish, but as yet have made little effort to fill the gap. Herring and whiting on the sand. Some sort of angelfish near the rocks. I see a nudibranch, dredging the name from somewhere in my head. A bigger fish, some sort of cod or wrasse perhaps. I don’t really know. Seaweed and seagrass - the difference between the two classes I know from long ago studies in marine biology. Seaweed is algae, complex algae, but algae nonetheless. Seagrass is a flowering plant; the only one that grown in the sea. Although, there are of course many species of seagrass. I look into the seaweed for the patterning of a wobbegong, keen to see one. I don’t see one, but keep a look out anyway. I shift my focus slightly, looking ahead to make sure I’m not about to bump into another swimmer. A shimmer of silver near the surface. A school of little fish, catching the light as they twist and turn through the water, shining blue, silver and gold. They dart away from me. I look back to the sea floor below me just as a wray moves away from my shadow. It’s not big, maybe half a metre across, and was completely hidden until it moved.

I pause in a shallow area and get my bearings, then strike out across the channel, the deep water below me darkening to grey blue on the edges of my vision. I feel more comfortable when I am back into shallower water, but then almost scrape myself on a rock when I am so fixated on looking down that I forget to watch where I am going.

I head back to shore, my mind as clear as the water. In the shallows, the shadows play across the sea floor. Bubbles on the water’s surface spread jewels across the sand below. The dark shadows of small fish give away their presence; otherwise they would be close to invisible.

I pull off my mask, snorkel and swimming cap and dunk my bare head and face into the cool water before I get out. I walk back up to the car park. No cigarette butts on the path. But I know the fire is still smouldering about ten kilometres away. As glorious as the sea is on these clear bright days and as meditative as being immersed in it is, I can’t help but look forward to summer ending and taking with it the ever-present threat of fire.

See you outside,

Jill