Beware Small Fish; You're Next!

Good news on the small fish front (you didn't know there was a small fish front did you? Its just ahead of the small fish back). Apparently overfishing of larger, more predatory fish has led to an explosion in small fish numbers. This is good news for small fish, small fishermen and anybody who likes anchovies on their pizza. As we hoover up their larger finny cousins the smaller ones are swimming through the holes in our nets and secretly rejoicing every time they see a fishing boat.

It has to be said there is no sense of piscine loyalty out in the cruel, briny deep. Any fish alive would sell out its scaly brethren for a few extra months of rather soggy existence. Every fish is a sneaking, crawling Benedict Arnold surreptitiously encouraging their friends and relatives onto hooks, guiding schools of lost tuna into nets and slyly pointing out where the larger fish can be found.

All of which leads me to the inescapable conclusion; fish are stupid. Don't those little race traitors realise that once we're done with the big fish we will come gunning (or rather netting) for them? The odd thing about this is that fish are supposed to be brain food. A diet high in seafood is one of the theories currently being used to explain how our knuckle dragging ancestors managed to get onto the path that would lead to nuclear fission, focus groups and viral marketing. How our deeply unintelligent ancestors managed to catch fish in the first place is something I'm a little unclear on. Shellfish are simple of course; they're easy to pick up and they can't run very fast. It is rather difficult to imagine an entire evolutionary process built on rock scrapings but stranger things have happened, Jersey Shore for example.

Actually Jersey Shore should pretty much kill any theories about the proximity of the coastline having an impact on intellectual development although possibly the cast members don't eat the fish. Since they live in New Jersey that's probably one of the smartest decisions they've ever made.

As you can see from the above fish have a lot to answer for; viral marketing, iphones, Snooki. Killing is too good for them (the fish that is but don't get me started on Snooki). Sweep the seas clean I say. Scour them, come amongst the fish with a hook in each hand and blood in our eyes (particularly if we haven't been very careful with those hooks). Pursue this act of oceanographic cleansing until the only fish alive are swimming in bowls owned by six year old girls. Think how smart we'll be once we've eaten all the fish in the world. Our skulls will have to expand to accommodate our newly enlarged brains.

Of course having hugely sized heads will bring a few problems. We will fall over easily and we'll have to drag our heads behind us where ever we go. However there is a simple solution. We just need to move to an environment more supporting of our newly enhanced bodies. Fortunately the planet will be littered with empty oceans we can move into. Good thing we killed all the fish really.