The very basic overall concept behind this article is that pesticides kill aquatic life. Needless to say, this is a bad thing. This article refers to cases of pesticide spraying back in the 1950’s. Different pesticides sprayed all over Canada and the United States, all had very negative effects on the life in streams and rivers.
One of these pesticides that is most harmful to the environment is DDT. In 1954 DDT was sprayed from planes in the forests of the Northwest Miramichi in Canada to control bud worms. The DDT was a mixture of 1/2 pound of DDT per acre, with oil. Within a few days after the spraying, dead fish started appearing on the banks of the stream. Many of the insects that the fish fed upon were killed by the DDT, so the fish had no food supply. The DDT spraying continue in Canada, and even when they use half the amount of DDT it still kills many fish.
In the USA where a full pound of DDT per acre is used, similar cases of DDT spraying wipe out more aquatic life. DDT is not the only pesticide that kills fish and other unintentional organisms. In the Southern United States many pesticides were sprayed to combat fire ants. These pesticides are mainly Heptachlor and Dieldrin. Both of these pesticides are very harmful to aquatic life and only surpassed by Endrin and Toxaphene. Everywhere any of these pesticides were sprayed, many aquatic life forms died.
After people started realizing how terrible these pesticides were, a resolution passed in 1958 prevented them from being sprayed from planes. This did not prevent many farmers spraying their crops without planes to control boll weevils. The rain washed the pesticides into the streams and killed more fish. DDT and other harmful pesticide chemicals were also deposited into streams by careless pesticide factories.
The Essay on The image of fish
Kevin Roberts uses the image of fish in both his poems – Skating Down Trout and A Fish Too Big – to explore existential anguish in the point of view of the water creatures. In both poems, the fishes were presented as living in some kind of prison – the trout in Skating Down was walled beneath ice, while the Arwanna at A Fish Too Big could barely move inside the enclosed aquarium. Although Roberts ...
This article suggests that some of the money spent on more toxic pesticides should be spent on research to prevent them from entering aquatic systems. This research and the use of biological controls would be much better for the environment, especially aquatic life.
