Nurse the Hate: The Puffer Fish

I would not imagine that anyone reading this is terribly familiar with the puffer fish.  The puffer fish is a medium size fish that is awkward like a loaf of Brownberry Wheat Bread finning around reefs and rocks.  It's an odd looking creature.  It would have been extinct eons ago if not for the defense mechanism of blowing up like a basketball so predators could not get their vicious mouths around them.  I have never seen a puffer fish do this in the wild.  Another diver when I was out last time said that on a previous trip, he had touched a puffer and it had blown itself up.  This prompted a quick rebuke from our dive leader that said the puffer fish could only do this trick three or four times in its life before stretching itself out permanently, leaving itself adrift like a beach ball until its lonely demise.  Do not touch the puffer fish!

That filled me with a wave of sadness for the puffer fish.  What a terrible fate.  Is the puffer fish aware that he can only pull this stunt three times in his life?  If so, clearly our friend the puffer fish does it once early in his life, maybe just for practice.  If someone told me I could do that, I would definitely check that out.  I don’t want to see what puffing up would do when a school of tuna come ripping through the reef.  That is not the time for experimentation.  A puffer fish needs to know what he is working with out there.  So there's one of the three gone right off the bat.  It's like finding a genie and asking for a cold can of Coca-Cola as your first wish to test the concept out with something low risk. 

If you are born a puffer fish, the first thing you notice is that you can’t outrun any other fish on the reef.  I would think this makes a young puffer fish quite edgy and self-aware of your physical shortcomings.  You're an aquatic version of a spindly grade school kid at the playground.  The first time a fish of any size whatsoever swims near, he invariably would completely inflate, even if he’s not in any real danger.  Then he will obviously face ridicule from the other fish on the reef.  “Hey, look at Simon over there!  He’s completely inflated for no reason!  What a pussy!”.  The other puffer fish will then give him a stern warning.  “Look Simon… I recognize that the trigger fish over there looks like a bad ass, but you can’t just blow yourself up like that!  What are you going to do if a shark moves into the area and you’ve already blown up twice?  You’re fucked!  Fucked!”.

Now the puffer fish is gun shy and likely won’t puff up for any reason.  Who wants to face that type of criticism from so-called friends?  The puffer fish becomes preoccupied with "saving" his inflations and now can't justify any scenario to puff up and risk an even worse scenario down the road.  This is how 68% of all puffer fish lose their lives.  They get eaten when they could have just puffed up.  Look it up.  It's well documented.  I’m sure it is on Google. It certainly is no way to live.  “Well, I better stick close to this little cave.  If I go out there I will probably get eaten.  Damn, I’m hungry though.  There isn’t anything left to eat in this cave.  I am going to need to go out there and nose around.  Shit.  Is this my life now?  My choice is to be eaten, stay in the cave and starve, or drift the ocean like a discarded beach ball?  Why has God forsaken me?  Is this all there is?”

I am probably projecting slightly here.  I don’t know if fish have existential crisis like that.  When I raised this entire concept to the gents in the boat, they seemed to have a great lack of concern over the situation of the poor puffer fish and instead seemed to focus on creating a distance between themselves and the guy that felt melancholy for the puffer fish.  Look guys, I am not the problem here.  I am attuned to the suffering of others.  It’s called "empathy".  Only the stoner guy gave it serious consideration because that is the type of thing stoner guys get tripped up on.  He did not believe the puffer fish had the mental acuity or consciousness to keep track of the number of times he had blown up, much less strategize about it.  He seemed unconcerned about the fish's emotional well being and was more concerned by ecology in general.  Fair enough.  Still, I worried about the mental state of my new friend the puffer fish, convinced he lived a life of constantly game playing scenarios of probability of his certain grisly death and worrying about his inflation limits.

When I swam in the ocean, I kept a safe distance from the puffer fish.  The last thing I wanted was a false inflation on my hands.  I kept thinking about the fish long afterwards, feeling terrible about his situation.  Then I decided to look into the puffer fish.  There is page after page of people asking about this Three Inflation Limit concept.  What I discovered was that this whole “three times inflation” thing is an urban legend.  It has no more basis of fact than than getting a 4.0 GPA if your roommate kills himself.  It turns out Mikey the Life Cereal Kid didn't OD on Pop Rocks and the puffer fish can puff up with water whenever strikes his fancy.  I felt relieved.  Not only that the puffer fish might be OK, but that someone other than me cared about the puffer fish enough that they decided to look into it as well.  These are the little moments that flicker to let you know that you aren't alone.