Fish Fry in Anguilla -

Fish fry? In garlic and lemon? No, this isn’t a story about a starter in one of Anguilla’s many excellent restaurants… It’s an unexpected moment that occurred on an early morning stroll along Meads Bay. If you’ve been to Mead’s Bay then you’ll know that just walking there can be aerobic exercise (yes, the sand is that sumptuous), but it was the breaking waves that caught my attention. The swell was rising slowly (it was a shallow section of the beach) and breaking into three foot rollers. The water clear enough that each gathering wave face became marbled by the sun over my right shoulder. And then, just before wave broke, that moment where the face stood near vertical, the glassy clarity of the wall of water became smudged. It took three waves to understand why. Inlaid into the wave face was a skittering of tiny darts. And then I realised what they were: 20… 30… 50… tiny fish were sewing their way in and out of the liquid wall, alternately flashing silver and racing like shadows through the water. They were dancing in and out of the breaking wave. It was simply scintillating… What were they doing? I wondered if there might be some evolutionary benefit to this. Or were these tiny creatures, like we do, just swimming and surfing for sheer joy?