Nationalism
part one
From Jens Mühling (trans. Simon Pare), Troubled Water:
It was imperialist policy purposefully to mix peoples together; it was nationalist policy forcibly to separate them. Each in its time had seemed to people to be as sensible and natural as it later struck them as being wrong and unnatural – and both had had a drastic impact on the demographic structure along the shores of the Black Sea. Numerous peoples had been unlucky enough to be resettled for a first time under imperial auspices and a second time, later, for nationalist reasons….
The jellyfish [Mnemiopsis leidyi] had first appeared here in the early 1980s, a stowaway in the ballast tanks of a freighter that had come through the Bosporus, like so many invaders before it. In the absence of any natural foes, it spread within a few years to every corner of the sea and set about its labours of destruction. The jellyfish eat fish eggs and fish larvae as well as the plankton species that juvenile fish feed on. Mnemiopsis leidyi took a huge bite out of the Black Sea’s food chain and brought the whole ecosystem to the brink of collapse.
By the late 1980s, the vast shoals of anchovies had dwindled to a tenth of their former biomass, and the other fish species that had provided a living to Black Sea fishermen for millennia were similarly decimated. All around the coast, boat crews found themselves out of work, with no clue as to how they were going to support their families. Dolphins too became a rare sight. Meanwhile, the phytoplankton at the bottom of the food chain whose natural enemies had been gobbled up by Mnemiopsis leidyi were able to multiply without restraint. Algal blooms became a frequent phenomenon, sucking oxygen out of the water and causing many scientists to fear that the sea’s deeper anoxic layers might expand out of control.
For a few tense years, all the signs seemed to point to an impending unstoppable disaster. But then something unexpected happened. In the late 1990s, a new invader named Beroe ovata entered the Black Sea, a kind of jellyfish that feeds predominantly on other jellyfish. This proved to be the natural predator that could stop Mnemiopsis leidyi in its tracks. The two jellyfish still inhabit the Black Sea, but one checks the spread of the other, so that neither can cause major damage. The ecosystem has returned to its former equilibrium, though it has taken years for the fish stocks to recover.
I watched the jellyfish sink into the slush at my feet. Power, I thought, is not eternal.