It is the northern coast of Antarctica, right under the Southern Ocean. Along the bay by the Ross Sea is a toothfish swimming gleefully. Gleeful is perhaps not the most apt word to describe a toothfish. A toothfish is a wide and heavy creature, the giant version of an anchovy fried over and over. Its body hovers slowly and languidly across the ocean. Its eyes are ashy and unresponsive.
And yet this toothfish flaps at the bottom of the ocean floor as if life is meant to be lived and nothing else. It pushes sand up into the water, where it dissipates like fog. The toothfish swims back and forth, and it stops only because it has detected something scuttling in the sand. It is a lone krill. The toothfish need not do much work to hunt its prey. It contorts its jaw, snaps the krill apart with its lips, and guzzles its broken body down. Then the toothfish stays in place, lets its stomach digest.
In the depths of the ocean there is only darkness. The toothfish is not aware of the other beings of the sea, just as the toothfish is not aware of the crackling cliffs of ice above him, melting down, down, down. In some ways, the life of the toothfish has changed along with the temperatures of the waters. The toothfish does not swim as far as it once used to, unable to cope with the heat once it leaves the area north of the glaciers. Instead it remains right at the edge of the bay, where small slabs of ice are dissolving into the ocean.
Here, it is comfortable, pleasant, stolid.
The toothfish swims, feeds, and rests, content with the life it has been given. It has never had any reason to consider why the routes have changed, or why the routes should change at all.
A shadow cuts through the darkness. It is much smaller than a whale, and much bigger than what the toothfish normally encounters. The toothfish ought to swim off, far far far away in another direction.
But why does the toothfish feel drawn to its vibrations?