Recently, I read in the papers something about measurement of pollution levels and it brought about my thoughts to how complicated it has all become. I know it’s self-contradicting to say that modernization and technology has simplified and made convenient many areas of our lives but all the same, it has also made them more complex.
Do you get what I mean? Take for example, food – a cooking ingredient such as chives, modernization has made it simple for us because we can just go down to the hyper-mart or green grocers etc and its all there. But at the same time, it’s also made it more complex because that’s where we HAVE to go if we want to get them. Chives are herbs that grow wild, but these days it’s not exactly what we would call such a common sight/occurrence that we can just take a stroll, find and pick fresh off a corner.
Maybe that isn’t such a clear example but you get the picture right?
Well the same goes with measurement of pollution levels. I’m not an expert so some complex indexes and how they are derived are an absolute bewilderment to me. But the one thing I do know and understand is nature’s natural markers themselves and it’s really quite a simple equation:
The higher the loss /fall in the number of natural inhabitants = the higher/more severe the effects of pollution.
So when I saw a sudden and quite remarkable sight of such a large number of healthy sized mudskippers basking on coastal mudflat. Now again I’m not claiming to be an expert so I’m not sure if mudskippers do bask but there were that many of them just standing/flopping/flipping around on the mudflat, some with their mouths open almost like they were singing.
Mudskippers are amphibious fishes, found along the intertidal zone; they live happily on the margin of land and sea. They have that special ability that allows them to dominate a habitat which few other animals can exploit – the soft mud with fluctuating quantity and quality of water.
Now mudskippers haven’t been seen around for a while along that coast. Even if there were any, they’d be few in number and certainly puny in size. Seeming that one of the main threats to the survival of mudskippers is pollution, the fact that they are back in such size and numbers clearly serves as a favourable indication of the cleanliness level in the area.
Isn’t nature wonderful? The fact that these little mudskippers can make a reappearance simply shows nature’s got that fighting spirit and if we can just give it that helping hand to cut down on pollution, it can all (well almost all) come back – the mudskippers have!
