smallmouth bass awaits his fate

If you’ve ever caught a fish,  you can look at their eyes, and more often than not, they’re turned at you while they await their fate. I’ll never forget the first time I looked back at one of those fish and decided to whack it. I certainly didn’t hesitate too long nor did I have a problem with it;  I knew I would eat the fish. However, as I thought about it in the succeeding moment, I empathized with the fish. After all, it was just trying to survive, as I am.

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Bad case of branchial cleft cyst

Or rather I am branchial cleft cyst-man, a re-gift to me by evolution. Appropriately enough, it’s a cyst leftover from the missing link; something you normally lose as an embryo, but in fish it turns into gills! That might explain my my piscivorous ways, amazing breath-holding skills as a kid, and my tendency to swim along the bottom of the pool like a catfish.

Anyway, after the cyst has been a benign lump behind my jaw for some fourteen-odd years, it finally got infected. Since I had no idea what it was before, I had to give in and visit a doctor. 45 minutes, a painful liquid extraction, and an $1800 bill later, the test revealed that I was Gill-man.

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Tilapia

Tilapia. Mention that word and I think of the fish thriving in sewage-infested waters of Ala Wai canal. They were brazen enough to even beg for food because no local would dare eat one of them. They are truly the insipid outcast of the fish world. But tilapia from safe aquaculture doesn’t eat too much crap, and is the rising star of the “sustainable” fish movement. Walk into any trendy San Francisco fish joint, and there’s a good chance your “fish” taco is one of these guys. Hell, they even eat a mostly vegetarian diet which limits fish feed impacts. Why do I hate it so much?

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