That wasn't fishing, that was failing with style!

Author: Julie Walker​​​

Hey there, to our many avid readers which I am sure there are hundreds of, if not thousands of by now (I am going to go ahead and assume the lack of comments just means that our eloquent writing and novel ideas just leave you speechless?)  Anyways, to all of you readers I apologizes for the lack of communication lately.. you see I have been spending the majority of my time this summer trying to catch a fish. Well preferably many fish, but every journey starts with a step right?  

Why have I been trying to catch many fish you ask dear reader? Well that is a very good question which I will now answer so beautifully that your words will once again escape you.  You see it all starts with Climate Change, like many good horror stories do. Climate change is decreasing the amount of freeze events occurring across northern Florida. These freeze events are what have traditionally kept mangrove trees from migrating northward, so without them mangroves have been cozying up to saltmarshes in their most northern latitudes, and eventually becoming the dominant vegetation. This can cause some difference in carbon storage and storm protection and lots of other things that people really care about. But one thing that people also care about that is surprisingly understudied is fish. Fish feed in the tidal inundated coastlines and hide from predators in the vegetation, surely they will notice when, they go to their favorite intertidal hangout and all of the grass have been replaced by a big woody trees with pneumatophore. So I set out to catch some of these fish in the vegetation at the high tide to see if there was any difference between the types and amounts of fish that would use the marsh and mangrove habitats. 

However, fish are a lot smarter than I had originally given them credit for, and have proven time after time, that no matter what methods I use they will not be caught by the likes of me. So for now, you can call me Ishmael.​

Me and my illusive white whale