The rebellion of the water bodies

Environmentalists simply define pollution as "something being in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong quantity", so if fishes are washed ashore in hundreds, it is safe to say pollution has occurred as the fishes are in the wrong place at the wrong time in a large quantity.

     While COVID-19 has been ravishing the earth's populace since December 2019, comments like - the purge, the end of the world, and so on are among new vocabularies that have been introduced. Some environmental enthusiasts even believe that the pandemic has given the earth's ecosystem sometime to heal no matter how minute this healing might be.

   As an ardent believer myself, in the environment, I was among the few who believed so, with practices involving less movement which would mean fewer vehicles on the road and of course decrease in emissions from vehicles, shutdown of industries, meaning little or no effluent discharge in bodies of water, it was safe to say, that the aquatic and terrestial ecosystems were healing themselves.

    The outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2020 in Nigeria also meant that the healing had to come to this part of the world; With the closure of industries, restriction of both vehicular and human traffic, the Niger Delta  where we dwelt had become in a word "cleaner". With the downfall in the price of crude oil, bunkery had reduced to an all time minimum and the resultant effect (Black soot) made minimal. The already was no longer as harsh to the skin nor the nostrils as it had been for quite a while. Everything seemed well with the environment until the bodies of water rebelled.

   Residents of Oyorokoto community in Andoni Local government area and Finema community in Bonny Local government areas Rivers state called out to the Governor to come to their rescue over the deaths of thousands of fishes littered on their shore lines with no known cause.

   Fishes including the golden fish,catfish, mallets, croaker and other species of fish were washed ashore in Rivers, Delta, Ondo, Bayelsa and Akwa Ibom states respectively. The sudden rebellion of the aquatic ecosystem begged the question, was the sea having a purge too? While several theories emerged as these areas are oil rich, industrial areas, a few theories crossed my mind.

  The Rivers state Ministry of Health and Environment had however come out to say  that; "the water after testing had shown no signs of an oil spill", therefore my myopic theory was derived. Living things are known to have several characteristics with adaptability as one of the prevalent characters, I therefore believe that with the rate of pollution growing yearly, the aquatic ecosystem had begun to interweave its fabric with its pollutant forming bonds that have now been broken with this rather seismic shift of events.