Icefish (a).
ACCRETIONS (Icefish)
I. The Louvre | Richelieu Wing | Accession MR 1745
Adam’s Prometheus hangs, frozen
in veined carrara marble
adamant chains held high above his head
The striated muscle of his arms taut
as a whale line
The ice-pick talons and
beak of an eagle pierce his side
with little more effort than a crabeater
leisurely dining on the day’s catch.
It hungers for his liver, living to taste
his angst. Agony seasons him.
Every day there is a new feast – the flesh
budding like the broken arm of a brittle star
It is renewed.
Below the cold surface of stone
I imagine highly organised tissue
converting the last of his energy
into the physical work of existing.
_
A million years before Hesiod
Erebus was the pall of the
pinna bivalve, the belemnite. He was the shroud
blanketing the benthic sediment as it slowly
sank and flowed into faults,
feeding earth's burning crust.
There, calcite was bound.
Subjected to its fate, it could
do nothing but twist and writhe
folding in on itself again
and again. As time passed it began
to rise higher and higher, begging an
audience with Zeus.
_
How is this fire-bearer tethered
to the Caucasus when he is
cleaved from the Apuan Alps?
II. The Ross Dependency | Antarctica | 1947
On the Balleny islands
a Swedish ichthyologist writes:
Neopagetopsis Ionah
found three days decayed in the belly of a whale
It is difficult to imagine
the fish as repentant.
After all, it did not run from
fate - it simply journeyed
from one sea of krill
to another.
–
More recent records show:
70,000 seeds migrate
to this continent each year.
They arrive embedded
in scientists’ shoelaces,
Burrowed beneath tongues.
They must feel as Jonah did -
first a passenger, swaying helplessly
fully at the will of a larger lifeforce, then
finally falling onto foreign soil
grateful and restored.
How aware they must be of their potential;
How eager to fulfil their purpose.
And perhaps like the prophet,
They are also here to warn us.
III. Filchner Trough | The Weddell Sea (31°W, 74.8°S)
Jonah’s icefish sculpts the sea floor,
thawing as it excavates.
It’s medium is erratic rubble,
crushed remnants of the past,
stowaways on the boot of a
glacier treading endlessly into the sea.
Select stones are placed
on the bed of the Weddell, arranged
into perfect circles.
They are fashioned after another master’s work: frazil ice
wedding itself at the water's surface.
Up there rings signify a union, too.
From the gentoo penguin’s perspective, it seems
these fish - no longer in need of erythrocytes
loosed 60 million of them to
the current, let them sink and freeze to the floor.
Centred in each, a thousand
clear spheres rest, consummate
and waiting patiently to join the water column.
Roe, milt, plankton, fry… every phase of
this fish circulates in the saline blood
of the southern ocean.
This is the only vertebrate without hemoglobin.
Proteins in the blood bind to ice,
freeze it in its tracks.
How miraculous -
It can do what the sea itself cannot:
cease the cold’s long arm extending.
It is a vision,
translucent life ghosting through its veins
as spectral as Ahab’s white whale.
My mind sings call and response.
It’s as if I’m in Father Mapple’s congregation.
Will it become truly invisible when it faces
a warmer pulse? Only time will tell.
Will we spend the coming days sinking coffins and hearses to one common pool?
Only time will tell.
One doesn’t think how much blood it costs.
Only time will tell.
IV. The Estuary | Kingston Upon Hull
In the dream, Oceanus entices the Humber
whispering Let us become
one great river to encircle the world,
a vast, unbroken body of water.
The silty estuary answers,
silently slipping into the sea.
This was the edge of a known world once
Cobbled streets and buildings of fired earth
now fall below the waterline, becoming buried in
settling mud as brown and sedentary as
an elephant seal.
The tidal barrier is a gateway to Atlantis –
another city fallen out of favour with the gods.
In a shallow relief of stone, an unexpected
icefish leers up at me, the hard line of its mouth
like plots mapped from one point
to another.
Subtly it shifts - the crisp edge of its carved fin
softens, its form unfastening from the stone’s set grasp.
Each line, so skillfully hewn
now begins to blur and bleed into flesh - a soft body
slack on ice. The marble’s veins soften to capillaries
but not even what is transparent
flows through them now
_
As dreams often do
it feels as if I am being carried away with the current …
The voice of Oceanus ebbs:
One day, the sea will recede,
and in its silted bed, you will remain—
a form pressed deep into earth
a hollow where bone once was.
Below, where the trenches
still fold and sink into darkness
Erebus stirs in the silt,
his shadow settling deeper,
pressing time into stone.
Artist: Emily Fratson
Fish Profile:
Conservation status
‘Icefish’ covers many species including members of the Channichthyidae, or Chaenichthyidae family. Also known as Crocodile Icefish and White Blooded Fish their blood has less oxygen - they lack red blood cells and haemoglobin.
They are vulnerable to rising sea temperatures which melt the ice covering their nests - exposing young fish to predators. Shifting algal patterns also affect their food sources. Moreover, Icefish create localised and concentrated communities so local environmental changes could destroy an entire colony.
Pike Icefish Champsocephalus esox is listed as Vulnerable by The IUCN Red List. The species has declined by up to 80% since the 1980s along the Chilean coast of the southern Patagonian Sea. Less is known about the population living in the Argentinian region. The species are limited to seas with low temperatures and high oxygen content and are vulnerable to climbing sea temperatures as well as to bycatch and invasive salmon.