{"id":2333,"date":"2025-08-14T04:24:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T17:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robertrath.com\/serendipity\/archives\/2333-last-gasp.html"},"modified":"2025-08-14T04:24:00","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T17:54:00","slug":"last-gasp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertrath.com\/serendipity\/archives\/2333-last-gasp.html","title":{"rendered":"Last Gasp"},"content":{"rendered":"<!-- s9ymdb:3002 --><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"serendipity_image_center\" width=\"1024\" height=\"643\" src=\"\/serendipity\/uploads\/land_photos\/122-_G2A3858-Edit.jpg\" alt=\"\"><br \/>\n<br \/>\nAs I headed upstream from Lover\u2019s Leap toward the River Blackwater Beach, I noticed a change. There were fewer lifeless fish on the riverbed now, and the first signs of the living, dying, and desperate.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nI saw trout with clouded eyes, their bodies veiled in a milky-grey film. Some floated upside down near the surface, barely moving. Others rose from the bottom in spasms of effort, only to sink back down again, spent.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThese once beautiful creatures should have been freckled with vibrant red spots against sleek, silvery-brown bodies. They should have been darting through the current with speed, agility, and grace.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nInstead, I watched their sickness, their distress, their final moments. Grief weighed on me. Anger too at what was, almost certainly, the work of human negligence.<br \/>\n<br \/>\n<br \/>\n#fish #fishkill #blackwater #mallow #munster #freshwater #grief #death #browntrout #ireland<br \/>\n<br \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I headed upstream from Lover\u2019s Leap toward the River Blackwater Beach, I noticed a change. There were fewer lifeless fish on the riverbed now, and the first signs of the living, dying, and desperate. I saw trout with clouded eyes, their bodies veiled in a milky-grey film. Some floated upside down near the surface, &#8230; <a title=\"Last Gasp\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/robertrath.com\/serendipity\/archives\/2333-last-gasp.html\" aria-label=\"Read more about Last Gasp\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertrath.com\/serendipity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertrath.com\/serendipity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertrath.com\/serendipity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertrath.com\/serendipity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertrath.com\/serendipity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robertrath.com\/serendipity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertrath.com\/serendipity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertrath.com\/serendipity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertrath.com\/serendipity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}