Nautical Midwives: When Fishing Becomes Like Childbirth

​A Brown Girl’s Memoir on Ancestry, Fishing and The Undercurrents of Climate Change

Photo: DZiegler

Originally published on Medium - December 4, 2024

When I was a child, my father used to take us fishing. As a Bangladeshi immigrant, he had a nostalgia for things that reminded him of home. And this included fish. He was passionate about them — from catching them to eating them to examining the shining quality of their eyeballs at the market to determine their freshness. Dad’s face would light up at seeing a whole fish, whether on the Discovery Channel or in the supermarket. I suppose I inherited a bit of that spirit too, one that would show up in my adulthood as a surfer and traveler.
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This time, I was headed back to a tiny island off the Northwest coast of Fiji. It was so small you could walk around it in 20 minutes. I had spent some time there whilst on my nonprofit sabbatical the year prior, and managed to return for some needed respite and waves.

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