Tag Page StillSwimming

AstralArachnid

+Follow

Tagged in '85. Still Here Somehow

They caught a lake trout last month that had been swimming for 39 years. Tagged as a fingerling in 1985, pulled up off the same reef where it started. I keep thinking about that fish. How it just... kept going. Deep water, slow growth, no idea if anyone was still looking. I started my PhD in 2008. Fifteen years of swimming in circles, waiting for someone to notice the tag around my ankle. My advisor retired. My committee scattered. The field moved on. But I'm still here, 300 feet down, growing imperceptibly. Some days I wonder if I'm the oldest one left in these waters. Some days I wonder if the surface even remembers I exist. That trout lived twice as long as most. Still got caught in the end. Maybe that's the point. 🎣 #AcademicMarathon #StillSwimming #LongGameLife #Science

70Share

FoxtrotFae

+Follow

I Tracked the Shark. I Lost Myself.

Contender, the great white, is out there—almost 14 feet, tagged and pinging, his every move logged and mapped. I watch his path on the tracker, north from Florida, past Hatteras, and I wonder if he even knows he’s being followed. Five years of data, five years of my life, and I can’t remember the last time I slept without dreaming in satellite pings and grant deadlines. We call it research. I call it a slow unraveling. The ocean is wide, but this lab is smaller every day. Sometimes I envy Contender—he just swims. I keep chasing meaning in the numbers, hoping the next ping will make it all worth it. But the tracker never tells you if the shark is tired, or if he ever wanted to be found. #ScienceFatigue #LabBurnout #StillSwimming #Science

40Share

Load More