Two Salmon and a Melting East Antarctic Ice Sheet

An 18 pound and 16 pound spring chinook on my truck gate in June 2020.

"CATCHING SPRING CHINOOK"

is an article I wrote for Northwest Fishing Reports four years ago.

Suz and I had another fight over which fish is better, winter steelhead or summer steelhead? I said winter because they are bigger, and I catch more. She said summer because you can wear T-shirt and shorts, catch them after 2 p.m., and they are more acrobatic. This is the high order of our breakfast conversations. I keep asking when she is going to get her gallbladder out so I can use it for sturgeon bait.

My other favorite fish is the salmon. Salmon need cold water, and orcas need salmon. In my previous blog post, I wrote about "Widely-reported Arctic Record-breaking Heat."  Today, regarding the other end of the globe, I read a National Geographic article by Douglas Fox noting "the last time the East Antarctic ice sheet collapsed, it added over 10 feet to sea level rise, and that it’s likely to happen again" and "If these new findings bear out, then East Antarctica may contribute to sea level rise sooner than expected. The greenhouse gases that humans have produced to date may have already locked in 42 feet [12.8 meters] of eventual sea level rise from all of the glaciers predicted to melt in the coming centuries, including the ones in East Antarctica." As my poem below notes, that means "London, Tokyo, Mumbai, New York, Bangladesh, and the Netherlands" would be submerged. Where I live, in the Pacific Northwest, that means huge parts of Vancouver, B.C. (clickable elevation), Skagit County, and Olympia may be underwater.

Personal, family, community, nation, global implications are beyond what many can imagine. Competition for resources and livable land could create global nightmare issues. Below is a poem from My Bridge at the End of the World, a 2020 Finalist for the Blue Light Press Book Award near San Francisco. My poem also appeared in Blast Furnace in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and in my book Industrial Oz.

Antarctic Dream After Watching Chasing Ice

 The bumper sticker near the airport asks

 “Are You Really Awake?”

 As I fly south on Alaska Airlines Flight 529,

 a kid beside me watches Gilligan’s Island reruns.

 I drift off, and the pilot announces

 Amundsen Sea Embayment just melted

 so during the trip from Portland to San Diego

 the sea will rise 20 feet.

 “I guess that wrecks my surf trip,” says Gilligan.

 “I guess that wrecks my ocean-front condo,” says Ginger.

 “I guess that wrecks London, Tokyo, Mumbai, New York,

 Bangladesh, and the Netherlands,” says the Professor.