Rescue

might; green, nice and clean; blue, sail on through.’“
    “Catchy.“
    “It can save your day, if not your life.“
    As we got near the flags, I could see they were just wooden pennants tacked near the tops of wooden posts, small birds like terns standing on every fourth post or so.
    Howard said, “Just be sure you always stay to the flag side as you move through the cut.“
    As we approached each of the posts with a bird on it, the creature would eye us, then fly away. The wading birds, some of them gray or blue as well as white, ignored us.
    As we entered deeper water on the other side of the cut, I said, “They seem pretty tame compared to the little ones.“
    Doris snorted. “The few that are left.“
    “How do you mean?“
    “When Howard and I first started coming down here twenty years ago, the fishing was spectacular, and on both sides of every cut you’d see hundreds, even thousands of birds. Now there are maybe a tenth of the fish and a twentieth of the birds.“
    “Why?“
    “Combination of things. The water for Florida Bay comes down from Lake Okeechobee through the Everglades and into the bay. Between the lake and the ‘glades, there’re sugar cane and vegetable farms that use fertilizers. When the rain runs off the fields, it carries phosphate into the water.“
    “And that’s bad?“
    “Standing alone, not terrible. The problem is, with all the residential development the last forty or fifty years, too much of the fresh water is being drained off to houses before it gets to us. That means too much phosphate, which causes algae blooms, and too little fresh water, which makes the bay too saline. You probably noticed last night, the water’s saltier than the ocean, made you buoyant, too.“
    “And that affects the birds and the fish?“
    “It affects everything. The sea grass is dying, coming up in... there! Just look over there.“
    I could see what appeared to be a manatee carcass, rocking slowly and lifelessly under the surface. “Dead?“
    “Dead sea grass. Whole clump of it. When the sea grass dies, the little crustaceans and the mullet that live in it die, too. When they go, the bigger fish and the birds lose their food supply, and they’re gone. At the rate of deterioration we’ve seen the last three, four years, pretty soon the bay’s going to be dead.“
    Howard said, “Kind of glad I won’t be around for that.“
    Doris didn’t say anything. About five minutes later, though, she pointed off the port side. “Howard, I see a mud.“
    “I don’t.“
    “Ten o’clock from the bow, about four hundred yards out.“
    “Got it. Good eyes, sweetheart.“
    He banked the boat again, slowing as we neared and circled a milky area shaped like an amoeba and maybe two hundred yards at the widest diameter. Moving upwind, How ard said, “Depth-finder shows four feet. String John up, sweetheart, and we’ll drift through once, see how they treat us.“
    Doris got a fishing rod and reel outfit from under fee gunwale and tied an odd-looking one-inch piece of metal to the end of the monofilament line. The piece of metal was attached to an odder-looking wooden thing about six inches long, sort of a concave bobber in red, white, and green. There was a matching metal thing on the other end of it, then line running from the second metal thing to a split-shot sinker and finally a hook.
    I said, “What’s all that?“
    She said, “A popper rig. The big thing’s a popper, the little metal gizmos the swivels that keep the line from getting all twisted and kinked as we drift. The split-shot takes the bait down from the gulls or terns that sometimes swoop for it when you’re not paying attention.“
    “What’s the bait?“
    Doris smiled and took a small aquarium dip net toward the stem. She opened a box at the waterline and scooped up what looked like a giant shrimp, maybe as long as the popper. Taking the shrimp between the thumb and middle finger of her other hand, she set down the net and then used the thumb and index finger of her free hand to twist off the shrimp’s tail.
    “Why did you do that?“
    Doris said, “Two reasons. First, there’s a spike in there that can give you a nasty sting. Second, this releases a kind of shrimp odor into the water, so be sure not to let your shrimp go under before you present it to the fish.“
    “Present it?“
    “Like, cast it out.“ She used the free hand to insert my hook up through the tail area and out again near the tummy. “See