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His
days in Africa caused him a heart condition that led to occasional heart
attacks. A forced lifestyle change had given him a reconsideration of
what to do with his life. He said, "I can grow anything. I learned from
hemp, but see, this is all hydroponics. No soil, just water and nutrients.
It's a very complicated process. I want to do this for the rest of my
life."
"Grow hemp?"
"No, actually I'm going to do aquaculture. I just bought a trailer downtown.
I'm going to put tanks in there and raise tilapia."
"Tilapia?
You're nuts." Tilapia, the so-called Nile Perch, is a dirty fish, a brackish
bottom-feeder from the Northern Nile. Despite African origins, tilapia
is known as a Southeastern-Asian standard, and with growing Asian populations
on the Pacific Coast of the U.S. and Canada, a market is developing.
I
told him, "Tilapia is already being farmed in Arizona. It's one of the
cheapest imports from Asia. And besides, it's a disgusting fish!" I have
landed at Bombay Beach, coincidentally this has recently been cited as
the exact spot as a primary suspect for California's next great faultline.
I am at the center of the apocolypse, only it gets worse.
There
are thousands of birds here, perched on a number of vacant buildings.
Although it is true that this area has become a sanctuary for migrating
birds, the pelicans and egrets and seagulls do not fly when I approach.
They are sick, many of them. Dying perhaps. Birds in the Salton Basin
routinely go through bouts of cholera and botulism.
I
am treading through a thick salted crust. Since evaporation is the Salton
Sea's only outlet for water, low sea levels mean excess salt. Where there
is no salt, there is water and mud, and decaying mobile homes. It wasn't
the suspected earthquake that pushed the old Bombay Beach Trailer Park
underwater, but rare tropical storms in 1976 and 1977. What was once a
booming trailer park community, sank. Now, the half-submerged skeleton
is a strange backdrop to the fluttering birds and the tinkle-tinkle of
fish bones lapping in the waves.
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The beaches of the Salton Sea are often made of miles of bones from fish and birds 
