We weren't worried when the trevallies and blowies ran out, there's plenty more fish in the sea. Weren't even stressing when the last yellow fin tuna was pulled in. I mean, prices sky-rocketed for a while but flesh by the kilo is never pricier than a cuppa coffee. And fish is fish. 

        The whole shebang didn't make a lotta sense anyway. We all remember decades ago when they started banning recreational fishing here and there. Jumped-up lefties trying to tell us all what to do, warning about breeding cycles and the like. I mean, with the icebergs melting and stuff you'd think there was all the room in the world for fish to breed. 

        That's what old Scrubturkey said, he said, ‘Maybe it's just that there's so much water now they think there's less fish?' 

        The government lifted the ban on whaling when stocks got really low. When people was struggling to pay their bills, boats all heading out and coming back with nothin'. Not that the fat cat's care about the little bloke but those politicians knew their fancy-schmancy sushi's gotta come from somewhere. 

        But the truth is we never really knew how low the stocks were until they were gone. Until that ocean was just micro-plastics and dead coral.
        Some fishing farms were still around and making an absolute killing!

        Then some science mob guys rolled in with this plan. They'd been studying Whiptails, this South American lizard that can reproduce without men. Like, the whole lot of ‘em is females. They just think about having a baby and ba-bang their body makes it, ya know?

        So, they did a bit of hoop-de-doo science stuff, DNA-type what's-it, and the next thing you know there's plenty of fish in the sea. And they're all female.

        The Prime Minister even said it. ‘Plenty more fish in the sea,' he laughed, gleaming over the microphone at a press-conference, the joke heard round the world. 

        And then it was on. 

        We sharpened our rusted hooks, filled the ice boxes below deck, kicked the trawlers into gear and waded in. It was easy, like shooting chicks in a barrel as they say. 

        Turns out the biggest problem was giving them the power, those female fish, they went crazy breeding. Next thing ya know the water was pumping with them, so many you could barely step a foot out at the boat ramp without them swarming ya boots. The water pumping with scaled bodies and fins and teeth. 

        We weren't prepared for the teeth.

        But I gotta say, the biggest thing we didn't see coming was when they grew limbs. Pulling the men under, scuttling sailboats and ramming yachts. 

And when they started throwing themselves outta the water, started drawing breath up top, that was when we knew we was in real trouble. Bloody fish.

 

Author Bio:
Tiffany Hastie is a doctoral candidate at Edith Cowan University researching animal voices in literature. Recipient of the Roderick Centre Online Fellowship with work appearing in Westerly, Verge, the little journal, and anthologies Pigface, Ourselves, and Follow the Salt. Tiffany has been a featured author on stage at both the Margaret River Writer's Festival and The Australian Short Story Festival.