I'm finally back, which means that if I am going to continue to blog I need to get caught up with (yechh!) politics. In all honesty, leaving the country and spending a week away politics does not make it more attractive upon return. It's a paradox, as it is my distrust of political manipulation which fuels much of this blog. As long as I am in the middle of it, it's not so bad (it can even be fun), but returning to it is very grim.

Dennis has spoiled me in my absence by writing daily posts! He's done such a great job that I almost feel like taking another week off.

Might it be possible to just take another week off from politics yet still write posts in this blog?

That's a pretty tall order for me, but I'll give it a try...

I went SCUBA diving and snorkeling, and saw all kinds of beautiful fish and coral. That would seem to be a non-political subject. Yet, increasingly, divers are being politically scolded with heavy-handed mantras like these:

More harm is done to the ocean’s ecology by divers than by anything else.

How? The site explains:

Coral reefs are beautiful and fragile systems. Despite repeated warnings, divers continue to touch coral and cause it to die. Many places in the world are rejecting requests by tourists to dive in the area because of the damage sustained to the environment. Do not be part of the problem, but rather be part of the solution by doing your part to protect the environment.

But if touching coral is a problem, someone in the enforcement industry really ought to do something about the parrotfish! Everywhere I dived, I saw these large fish chomping away on coral. Not only that, I heard them!

CRUNCH! CRUNCH! CRUNCH!

These fish have incredibly strong beaks that bite into the coral, then grind it up and swallow it. For me to do the same type of damage, I'd have to take a pair of channel lock pliers or electrical nippers underwater, and and spend my dive shaving off pieces of coral. And I'm only in the water for less than an hour because the air runs out. They're in the water chomping on coral all day every day.

Sheesh. See how quickly even something as non-political as diving can be politicized? [I think this means that despite my attempt, I have already failed to avoid politics.]

At least the parrotfish are fish, and they need not worry about environmental politics. Nor do they need to worry about sexual politics, despite the fact that for them, things like sex changes and role reversals are routine:

Parrotfish can and will undergo sex changes when necessary. There is a multitude of options in their world. They are born both male and female, but males can become females and vice versa when population densities are low and breeding males or females are in short supply. Some species live in a harem structure, with one male to a few females. If something happens to the male, oftentimes the dominant female will become a male and breed with the rest of the females. If another male moves in, that fish may again become female.

With at least one species -- the redband parrotfish -- all males are derived from born females through sex reversal. When a female of a spawning group becomes a male, it will wander until it finds an unprotected group of females to create its own harem.

Added to this androgyny are the complicated pattern and color changes that each species undergoes at different stages in growth and in conjunction with its gender changes.

These transsexual, er, polysexual (er, would that be "pollysexual" for parrot?) fish are down there mutilating the coral to their hearts' content, while humans get the moral lectures.

Here's a picture of the rainbow eco warrior that does its thing and gets off scot-free:

I didn't have an underwater camera, but here are some beautiful Bermuda shells I spotted quite close to the sea:

(BTW, shell collecting is bad for the environment too!)

And here's a not-as-naughty nautical scene:

Anchors are bad for coral too, and I don't even want to speculate about how the propeller might have gotten itself broken. Bermuda is surrounded by hundreds of wrecks, which I'm sure did great damage to the environment. But now they're part of the environment.

Imagine, becoming part of what you damage.... Being a wreck must be tough.

(I guess I'd rather visit one than be one.)