Posthuman Blues

Disappearance of Eels Worldwide Puzzles Scientists

"The eel population has undergone a 30-year decline all over the world, and no one can put a finger on the cause. David Sommerstein of North Country Public Radio reports on how the decline is affecting fishermen on Lake Ontario, who depend upon the eels for a living."

I haven't yet listened to the audio, but a few thoughts come to mind. Some eels are electric, right? In light on the Missing Homing Pigeon Mystery, perhaps the eels are not so much missing as simply lost, unable to orient themselves because of the planet's unstable magnetic poles.

Of course, when species get "lost" in the wild, they die because they're cut off from their normal diet. This could be a brief prelude to an ecological domino effect; species that rely on the magnetosphere for navigation wander off, never to be seen again . . . pretty soon, those oceanic "dead zones" the American press has been so good at ignoring grow exponentially larger. Then everything starts dying, seemingly out of nowhere -- an ecological 9/11.

So by all means keep on pouring that mercury into the water supply. I love a good game of chicken.