Pop Was Right!

  The hike to the pier this afternoon got me to pondering one of the great mysteries of life...or at least of the Bayou.  Ever since I was a wee tyke tagging along with Pop, I noticed little mullet would school in the shallows.  While there is nothing unusual about this, I always found it interesting how they schooled.  To me, it was easy to distinguish the baby mullet from other small fishes by their schooling technique while in the muddy waters.  Bull minnows would all stay low beneath the water's surface or would scatter into the marsh.  Menhaden rarely visited the shallows but stuck to the deeper parts of the Bay.  Their telltale ripples could be seen as far away as several hundred feet or so.  It was those tiny mullet that intrigued me, however.  More oft than not, one can spy the little rascals with their "noses" stuck high out of the muddy water.  When I asked Pop why the little fish did this, his simple answer was "They want a breath of fresh air."  I was to accept that and not question...as was the rule back in the day.  

  Come to find out, Pop pretty much knew his stuff.  While the mullet were not actually filling their "lungs" with air, they were, in a sense, breathing.  It was years later when a visiting marine biologist explained a lot of the sealife facts to a group of third graders, that I discovered how close Pop's answer was to being accurate.  The mullet were breathing but not how I had imagined as a kid.  It seems that when the oxygen levels in the water become dangerously low, fish do indeed lift their heads out of the water for air.  Whether the fish are pets in a tank or mullet in the brackish water of the Bayou, the idea is the same.  

  All of this information came tumbling back into the brain this afternoon as I watched a school of little mullet playing in the shallows.  These little guys had dallied too long to escape to the deeper waters when the tide receded.  They became trapped in a small tide pool that was only inches deep.  The soft mud and algae had depleted the oxygen levels below the norm for the fish.  While they were still actively playing, they occasionally would gather to stick their heads out of the water.  I can only imagine how sweet the fresh air was after being confined in the near sludge of the puddle.  As I watched, the thought that I should net the mullet and release them at the end of the pier came to me but, then, that was halted by another thought.  In just a matter of an half hour, the tide would be returning to fill the spot where the fish were trapped.  My efforts to "save" the fish would have muddied the waters more and probably have killed dozens of the little rascals.  Best leave things alone when it comes to situations like this.  Mother Nature has a way of taking care of things.