The Fish Cam

by Heather Mydosh
It's been an age since I've crossed the St. Mary's. Four years, I could see it out my bedroom window. Now it's been four years since I've seen it at all. I remember the marshes, the boardwalks on the Canadian side visible from my drivers' side door while crossing the Bridge, the look of it while munching at West Pier in the summer and sipping hot cocoa on Portage in winter. Now, my only remaining connection to it is the Fish-Cam. Currently, all it's showing me are some rather impressive sturgeon in a tank in the Fish Lab, but I eagerly await the time when unnamed researchers will pop the webcam back beneath the skin of the river and my privileged browser will once more track the movements of fish and particulate skimming past an artificial eye half a world away, and inquisitive fish will peer unseeing from my screen to inspect the books on the shelves behind me and the quality of Scottish air. That this live feed plugs one of my senses back into an aspect of a river I used to know, at least in a cursory way— a live feed from back where I used to live. What a curious thought: having left the river, the towns, the continent, I can still (albeit via technology) tap back into a life I've left and even while I was there didn't precisely have access like this. I could chill my toes, but now I observe the fish.

Moderator's Note: To view the Fish Cam at Lake Superior State University's Aquatic Research Lab, visit www.lssu.edu/arl and select the Fish Cam link on the right hand side of the page.