Take care of your goldfish

In the October 16 NYT Trilobites blog, we learned, what some of us have long suspected, fish get depressed. "The trigger for most domestic fish depression is likely lack of stimulation," reported Heather Murphy. Fish are naturally curious, Murphy quotes Dr. Victoria Braithwaite who recommends adding new objects to your fish tank, or moving them around.

Since at least in 2008, it has been common knowledge that low levels of anti-depressants are making their way out of our bodies, through the waste stream, and into the ocean (and back into our supply of drinking water). Fairly contained bodies of water, like Puget Sound, don't get flushed thoroughly. Here's a recent summary from 2016 on Vice (and abstract for the underlying research.)

For my Bay Area friends: Drugs in Water.

Here's a poem from five years ago about barnacles and the gasping ssri sea.

If you recall Darwin made his name in barnacles before publishing On the Origin of Species. His friend and mentor, Joseph Hooker, told Darwin that he and his fellow scientists would have little confidence in any speculation about the possibility of species evolving if it came from someone who had not done the real, nitty-gritty taxonomic work of describing some group in detail. Darwin replied to Hooker: “How painfully (to me) true is your remark.” He chose barnacles; he'd collected many in his travels. (Source: Naming Nature.)

In 1854, after 8 years of studying barnacles, Darwin wrote, "I hate a barnacle as no man ever did before, not even a sailor in a slow moving ship."

Just do what you can do. Take care of your goldfish.