The Reed

Spending my summers in Calabria, my place of birth, one of my core memories was following my father while he spearfished. Our beach house sat in front of an artificial reef created to protect the shoreline from the waves. A myriad of different species thrived in that environment making our catch reliable. We would swim home, clean the large fish we had catched and eat all together at the dinner table. I still visit that same reef, year after year when visiting my family, hoping to do what my father once did. I swim to the same place and enter the same way I used to but emptiness surrounds the once animated body of water. The fish are fewer and smaller with fear in their eyes. What once felt like a secure catch now became a strike of luck. A new hotel recently opened offering all kinds of attractions for its customers like snorkeling and boat rentals to name a few. This degraded the reef's capacity to generate the abundance I was used to. Now the environment has simplified with fewer species trying to survive in what is left of their home. Now when I put on my mask and fins I feel like I lost the gift of a shared generational practice because of our own people reshaping the environment. Though it no longer provides assurance or abundance, the reef nonetheless contains life begging to return as it once was.