The Wild Hunt - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 19

land and the Faroes to decide how many fish each nation should take,
now that the shoals were moving further north in the winter; 2 or to
overfishing in the Cantabrian Sea by the Spanish fleet, which had
recently netted almost twice the tonnage its quota permits. 3
I have not been able to establish whether or not the fish which
migrate into Cardigan Bay belong to the same populations as those
being hammered in other waters. In any case, the mackerel which
enter the bay, even in better years, when you can pull 100 or 200 into
the boat in an hour or so, are the tattered remnants of what was once
a mighty population. Within living memory, local fishermen say,
the shoals were three miles long; 4 today you would be lucky to find
one which stretches to a hundred yards. The European Union classi-
fies the mackerel stock in the Irish Sea as being 'within safe biological
limits', 5 but this says more about our reduced expectations of what a
healthy population looks like than the state of the species.
There was another bump on the line and I pulled up a small brown
fish. I hesitated before I swung it in. Brown fish, on this coast, are
brought in carefully, in case they belong to the species which, for
anglers, is the most dangerous animal in British waters.
I first snared one on my virgin voyage into Cardigan Bay. I had been
catching mackerel, which dashed around wildly when I hooked them.
But this thing stayed down and shook its head. I could feel the vibra-
tions all the way up the line. I brought it to the surface and saw that
it was about eighteen inches long, etiolated, mottled brown and white.
As I lifted it out of the water it started thrashing madly. I swung it
towards my free hand, but just before I grabbed it, some ancient
alarm, long buried in the basal ganglia, sounded. I dropped the fish on
the boat and studied it as it rattled around the deck. I thought I knew
every species in British waters, but I had never seen anything like this.
Fins ran the length of its body, shimmering purple and green. It had a
snake's stripes on its flanks, bug eyes on the top of its head and a huge,
upturned mouth. Suddenly, from some long-forgotten topic or poster,
the name swam into my mind.
This was not a member of the lesser species, which hides in the sand
at low tide, ruining the holidays of bare-footed children. It was a
greater weever, which, I later read, could make grown men weep and
rage with pain. Like the smaller species, it has three poisoned spines