FEATURED ACTIVIST OF THE MONTH

Mark Spitzer—novelist, poet, Managing Editor of THE EXQUISITE CORPSE, and writing professor at the University of Central Arkansas (home of THE OA and THE EC)—is also a self-proclaimed “gar nut.” In his newly released book, SEASON OF THE GAR (published by University of Arkansas Press), Spitzer’s passions collide as he turns his pen on the object of his affection—the garfish, or what he terms “America’s most misunderstood fish.” The book traces Spitzer’s fishing adventures through the swampy backwaters of the South to his living room, where he keeps his garfish tank stocked. According to Andrei Codrescu, famed author and Editor-in-Chief at THE EXQUISITE CORPSE, Spitzer’s latest is “a work of history, adventure, and philosophy, as suspenseful a tale as any fictional thriller, yet amazingly true and thought provoking.” THE OA sits down with Spitzer to discuss his new book as well as the thrills and complications of being an eco-sensitive fisherman and hungry gar fetishist.

THE OXFORD AMERICAN: Images of garfish immediately generate intrigue and/or strike fear in the hearts of viewers. How did you first get interested in the mammoth prehistoric fish?

MARK SPITZER: The first time I ever saw an image of an alligator gar, I was struck with awe. It was a seven-foot monster-fish two guys had landed on the shore of the White River in Arkansas. That’s what piqued my interest and led to thirty-plus years of fish fantasies involving gar.

THE OA: Is it fair to say you are obsessed with garfish, or have been?

MS: Yes.

THE OA: You are a gar-fishing enthusiast/activist/writer. Do your love of the sport and fascination with the animal ever compromise your conservationist efforts?

MS: Not yet. If anything, being excited about gar helps me translate my enthusiasm to others. Besides, most of my conservation efforts are through my writings, which tend to preach to the choir. I have yet to receive any guff from those who do not agree with my gar politics, except on YouTube where jackasses who can’t spell are quick to accuse anyone with gar empathies as “stinky, hippocritical [sic] PETA hippies.”

THE OA: In your new book, SEASON OF THE GAR, you attempt to re-educate people about the oft-maligned fish. What is the most common misconception?

MS: There are three main misconceptions: 1) that gar devour game-fish populations, 2) that gar attack humans, and 3) that their flesh is no good to eat. All of these are untrue and driven by ignorance and hatred.

THE OA: In a passage about the wayward American outdoorsman, you say that “there’s sometimes a bit of truth in stereotypes.” What stereotypes hold true for the garfish?

MS: Well, gar are monstrous, in size and appearance. Especially the alligator gar. Being a monstrous creature, however, doesn’t mean that a creature is a monster. It just means that it looks terrifying. But terror is also personal. Whereas most people probably see a terrifying, monstrous fish, I see a gentle giant that inspires the imagination.

THE OA: Describe the wildest garfish hunt you’ve been on.

MS: Most garfishing I’ve done has been pretty tame. Lots of sitting and waiting. One of the littlest alligator gars I ever saw, though, did provide a large amount of drama when I was fishing with “extreme angler” Jeremy Wade during the filming of the “Alligator Gar” episode of RIVER MONSTERS frequently replayed on Animal Planet. That gar was only three feet long and had swallowed the hook, so I put a special tool in its mouth so Jeremy could try to get the hook out. It suddenly spit out the tool and leapt up, snapping at the air. Jeremy’s hand just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and he got chomped a good one. The show then spectacularized that clip, making it seem like the gar was aggressive and out for blood.

Watch the video.

THE OA: You are also a novelist and a poet. In what ways, if any, are writing and fishing similar?

MS: The obvious answer to that is that there’s a lot of time spent planning and waiting. Patience is especially important when a gar has bait in its mouth. You have to wait for the gar to swallow the bait, which usually takes ten to twenty minutes. If you set the hook before it swallows, the hook usually pops out of its mouth. Also, both garfishing and writing include a lot of necessary failure in order to succeed.

THE OA: You are sensitive to the gar’s plight, and yet can’t resist the urge to fish and track them, and even keep them as pets. How does one participate in the sport without succumbing to what you term the “redneck sportsman” mentality?

MS: I practice catch and release, which is something you can’t do after you put an arrow through a fish’s brain. When it comes to alligator gar, this is especially important, since there are so few of them left and they are a threatened species throughout their range. Personally, I just love to see them, whether they are in the wild or in my living room. I have nothing against rednecks, just the ones who wipe out gar so that then there are fewer for everyone to experience. It’s not hard at all to resist succumbing to the urge to “Kill, Kill, Kill.” That’s what most people who are not in prison do every day.

THE OA: Do you feel that being an academic and a writer earns you more or less credibility in the fishing community as a gar spokesman?

MS: Both. I’ve run into people who believe that you don’t gain authority about gar by reading studies on diets and range—that the real way to know them is to get out there and get them. I do that, too, but some people feel a natural competition with me; as if it’s their experience versus my experience. For the most part, though, my audience consists of readers of environmental literature, students, aspiring writers, some scientists, and those who are interested in fish. This audience, I think, grants me a lot more credibility than those who say “Less talk, more fish.” Overall, though, the fact that I wrote the book means I must know something, so people tend to respect that.

THE OA: Can you explain the fierce competition that exists between the bowhunting and rod-and-reel camps of fishermen?

MS: It’s not so much fierce competition as it is a clash of cultures. The rod-and-reelers tend to know there’s a chance the species can crash, which is why they don’t go out with bows and arrows, and they tend to practice catch and release. These days, there are a lot fewer rod-and-reel fishermen who go out specifically for gar—compared to archers who go out after gator gar with the intent to kill. Among the bowhunters, there’s a tradition of tossing the fish on the shore for the vultures, right by the boat launch. In a way, it’s a primal way of showing off—but what I see is a total disrespect for an important part of our environment. Ultimately, I don’t think the bowfishermen are thinking about their actions (and the consequences of their actions) quite as much as the rod-and-reel fishermen. This is a problem.

THE OA: When you appeared on Animal Planet’s RIVER MONSTERS as a gar expert, or what you term a “garologist,” do you think the exposure helped or hurt your cause to preserve the species?

MS: That exposure has helped gar. First of all, there’s never been a television show in which gar have been investigated and, ultimately, labeled “misunderstood.” Jeremy Wade ends the show by rejecting the notion that gar are “man-eating fish.” He states that we should learn more about this fish. My research on gar played a major role in his conclusion, which is why he asked me to be on the show and talk about the things I discussed. That show is extremely popular now. Hundreds of thousands of people have seen it, and it keeps getting replayed. The more that message gets out, the more gar have to gain—which helps to preserve the species in general.

Watch the video.

THE OA: You have a pet gar whom you call Frankengar, which you house in an oversized tank inside your house. What is it like cohabitating with the “monster” fish?

MS: That gar is a great pet. I’ve had him for seven years and consider him a good friend. It’s fun to watch him eat and dance in his tank. I recently gave him a roommate: Glummy Glummerson, the spotted gar. Glummy never did anything but sit there on the bottom glumming. But my Frankengar taught Glummy to dance. Now they’re friends and dancing around all the time. They’re pretty well-adjusted, happy fish.

THE OA: Does your interest have a dark side—has it ever adversely affected your normal life?

MS: Nope, there’s no dark side to loving a beautiful, butt-ugly fish. My wife thinks it’s funny that I carry a picture of a huge alligator gar I caught in my wallet and that I don’t have a picture of her in there. If there are any adverse effects, I guess I’m still waiting for them.

THE OA: You claim that “gar may look tough, but they’re as fragile as the ecosystem,” while also claiming that long after the apocalypse, gar will still survive. How do we reconcile the gar’s evolutionary fitness with its current decline?

MS: Basically, it’s hard to kill off the littler species, but easy to kill off the alligator gar, which is the largest of its species. The bigger a creature is, the more complicated its reproduction is. That’s just the way it is; science says so. In the case of the alligator gar, campaigns to wipe them out throughout the South, coupled with what I term “continental constipation” (i.e., dams and levees) have cut into their numbers. Then came the trophy fishing of the ’40s and ’50s, in which we saw the Arkansas [gar] population decimated in just three years. We’ve been trying to recover from that for decades. But anyway, the answer is…they’re like us. They’re relatively large creatures, but they’re very sensitive to environmental factors. I don’t think it’s possible to wipe out the smallnose and the spotted gar (because they’re so abundant and widespread), but the big ones need management plans to maintain and sustain their species. The world they used to live in (for millions of years) has changed. Species are crashing every day. There might not be any reconciliation. Especially if we don’t take action.

THE OA: At one point in the book, you describe how a British journalist relayed a tale about a gar attack, one which you yourself embellished and propagated. Is the gar simply a victim of our love of monster myths?

MS: Yes, gar are gargoyles, gar are scapegoats, gar are monsters in our midst. At least, that’s the popular conception. We’ve done this to people as well—victimized humans because of their demographics, race, religions, social statuses. Sometimes we catch ourselves and change our ways, sometimes we don’t. Gay people are still demonized, and look at how we’re treating Hispanics in Arizona. So there’s an overlap here: Humans villainize people and they villainize fish. It’s all about xenophobia, hatred, and fear. We love monster myths, but at the core of all those Frankenstein stories, werewolf stories, stories of man-eating monsters, there’s often some deep psychological persecution going on. Perhaps the real monsters are those who are pointing their fingers, their nooses, their unstudied accusations at gar—because they’ve been indoctrinated by generations of misinformation.

THE OA: The gar is an elusive creature. How do we study them, as you advocate, without trouncing on their natural habitat?

MS: Unfortunately, we have to get into their habitats to sample them and attach transmitters and stuff like that. That might just be preliminary work, though. What we really need to study first is how to undo the damage we’ve been doing by letting unchecked science and biased government agencies confuse the life history of a species. The most difficult fieldwork, I think, will be in trying to change the communal opinion regarding gar. The Missouri Department of Conservation, however, did a good job of educating the people of their state. Alligator gar have been reintroduced into Mingo Swamp, and a good public-education campaign helped spread the word that these fish are not to be feared. If we can do that throughout the South, then we can have more alligator gar to study, so we won’t have to trounce around as much in such concentrated areas.

THE OA: You attempt to tell the gar’s tale in the context of human history and its conflicts, going so far as to conceptually link gar over-fishing to Nazism, colonialism, and religious warfare. Some people might feel uncomfortable with your comparison of killing gar to the killing of ethnic populations. Do you really think these ideas are causally related?

MS: They are violently related. Editors have always had problems with me equating gars to Jews, opting instead for the Native-American analogy. But whatever the case, our motivation to destroy these fish isn’t much different than any genocidal agenda. I mean, when a “civilization” doesn’t like something, they literally demonize it. That’s why gar have a history of being equated with the Devil, demons, Satan, dragons, etc. It’s rhetoric, and it stinks of Nazism. The unfortunate thing these days is that the demonizers have lost all sense of metaphor. For example, gay bashers don’t even go to the trouble of equating gays with the Devil anymore, they just get on the radio and say “God hates fags.” Typically, that’s how our society responds to anything it dislikes. I find it amazing that something as silly as a fish managed to get lumped in with humans, but that’s the way it is.

THE OA: What debt does our culture owe to the garfish?

MS: That’s a very interesting question. I’d say that we owe the garfish the same thing we owe the buffalo, the manatee, and maybe even the indigenous people of the continent. That is, they were here first, we colonized the land, so now we should protect and celebrate what’s left. Otherwise, we suck.

THE OA: In the  book, you provide recipes for Gar Stew, Gar Boulettes, Gar Spitzviche, and many other dishes. Where did you get most of your garfish recipes from?

MS: I did a lot of research. Collected recipes from books, online, magazine articles, etc. The ceviche [Spitzviche] recipe, however, I made up.

THE OA: How do you get from your catch-and-release philosophy to gar stew?

MS: I encourage catch and release of all gar species, especially alligator gar, which is the most endangered. The smaller species, however, have their utility. Rather than see gars thrown on the shores to die—which is the current situation—I’d rather see them being served for dinner. I want to spread the word that their meat is good to eat. It cooks up a bit thick, like the density of chicken, and you should always watch out for their eggs, which are poisonous to humans and pets. Cleaning them is tricky, but there are instructions in my book on how to do it. I don’t see promoting the food value of gar as clashing with the idea of catch and release. I see eating them and letting them go as ways of respecting them, and both are good alternatives to flat-out, hatred-driven murder.

THE OA: In the book, you claim that “garocide [the killing of garfish] is suicide.” Can you explain what you meant?

MS: We live in an ecosystem, which is a network of interconnecting organisms. Thus, every part of the body is part of us. We are all part of a whole. So if you cut off your finger because you don’t like the way it looks, then you end up bleeding. You may even bleed to death. In that sense, killing off part of the system affects the rest. This is especially important when you consider how gar maintain balance by devouring the large minnows—carp, shad, buffalo—that destroy nesting habitats. Death, of course, is a natural part of everything—but when you accelerate it in relation to a certain species, you might just bite yourself in the ass.

THE OA: In your estimation, where do we stand?

MS: In Arkansas, we are on the brink. We could tip one way or the other, and it’s pretty much the same way in all the other states where gar exist. The salmon industry has collapsed on the West Coast, sturgeon populations are down 70% worldwide (over the last century), the Atlantic grouper is crashing right now, and the Humboldt squid is taking over niches where other fish used to be. So we better be vigilant and do what we can for gar and other endangered populations or we’re going to be up a creek. A creek full of dead fish!

THE OA: If given the opportunity, what one question would you ask a garfish?

MS: Will you take me to your leader?