The Fish Pits

Changing careers isn't easy. There's a certain sense of baked-in fear that clings to the whole process like a faint stink. It starts even before the thought nugget crystallizes into a decision - long before the resignation letter is written or the new job accepted. Ultimately, it's fear of the unknown. No surprises there. Would that a simple self-audit and a refreshing of priorities were enough to assuage the doubt. It helps, certainly, yet the stink lingers.

You know what else stinks? The aquaculture industry.

Oh, certainly, one could perform a deep dive on native wildlife impacts or sea lice levels. The more barbaric aspects of aquatic animal husbandry could have their particularly grotesque underbellies scrutinized from time to time. It would not be for the faint of heart, I can assure you. It was into this new world of aquaculture that I found myself one year ago.

The Indeed advertisement said “Maintenance & Repair Technician” for a busy fish farm just down the road from where I lived. The pay was decent, the location perfect, and the hours compatible with my familial obligations. Still, it was a step into the unknown. Though I certainly know my way around a toolbox and can repair just about anything, I was unfamiliar with the idiosyncrasies of fish farming. This critical gap in my knowledge would prove to be a harrowing oversight.

The land-based fish hatchery setup is basically this: Aquifer water gets pulled up and treated with intense ultraviolet light to kill any unwanted bacteria. Then it gets pumped to the buildings housing the eggs, the little fish, and the bigger little fish. At various points, the water is further treated with healthy bacteria, food-safe chemicals, and waste-removal devices like drum filters and screens.

The maintenance and repair of said pumps, filters, and devices was what I thought I was buying into. For the most part, that's what the job entailed. I spent most of my days repairing engines, electronics, plumbing, and driving material around with the forklift. You know: Maintenance stuff. Not fish stuff - maintenance stuff. I should’ve known any job that lists both “repair” and “biosecurity compliance” in the same sentence would eventually lead to something unsavoury.

Then one fine day, I was handed a power washer and a look of vague apology.

"Time to clean the bunker," my supervisor said, avoiding eye contact like the words might escape if not tethered by discomfort. "Make sure you're wearing PPE," he said.

For the uninitiated, “PPE” stands for “Personal Protective Equipment.” It's basically the only reason some people have jobs. Worksite safety revolves around PPE like the moon orbits the Earth - distantly, indifferently, and occasionally eclipsed by poor judgment. It’s the adult version of a blankie - comforting and wholesome, until it’s thoroughly soaked in Eau d’ Low Tide.

Now, bunker is a funny word. It implies a place built to withstand war, radiation, or at the very least, scrutiny. But this one wasn't protecting anything. This one was a concrete tomb, about the size of a couple school buses. If nightmares had a basement, this would be it - sealed in concrete and lined with the regrets of a hundred thousand mostly disassembled salmon. Its purpose was to house roughly a year's worth of fish hatchery runoff. You know, the colourful, odiferous treasures that the filters didn't catch.

The moment I stepped inside, my senses began furiously writing letters of resignation. The air had physical weight. It wasn’t just humidity - it was moist history. The walls were bedecked with what might have been ancient hieroglyphics penned in fluids of various viscosities. The floor squelched and foamed under my boots with each trembling, mortified step.

The chambers to wash were long and narrow, but low enough that I could not stand up fully. It was dark, hot, and claustrophobic in the extreme. Like the bowels of post-oopsie Chernobyl with an Atlantean twist. The scent was indescribable. Oppressive. Abyssal.

It wasn’t even a smell anymore. It was a personality - and it hated me.

My task was simple: power wash every surface until it was no longer an unforgivable blight upon the history of humankind. No timeline was given. Just that look again - that same bureaucratic pity normally reserved for interns and people who don’t read fine print.

By the end of the first hour, I'd been baptized in congealed, gelatinized fish waste. Despite the face shield and rainwear, it had somehow entered my mouth, nose, ears, up both sleeves, and down my back. It was the dictionary definition of “horrifying” in every sense of the word. I had to duck under beams decorated with stringy entrails like cursed tinsel. Opaque fish-eyes floated around my boots, madly staring into my soul as they bobbed by.

Day two arrived, heavier with PTSD from day one - and the trend only escalated. I was supposed to be repairing generators! Fixing broken pipes! Welding and grinding and fabricating! Working in my nice, warm shop with humming tools and music and a sense of getting projects done!

In the bunker, I was the project.

I began to suspect that the company I worked for was actually a front for some kind of clandestine psychological research program. Something off the books and morally elastic. "How long until he breaks?" I imagined them asking from behind a two-way mirror. It was a preferable mental exercise to pondering how a living creature can be rendered into so much moldy pudding. With every pass of the pressure washer over walls coated in forbidden phở, my hands ached, my heart sank, and the smell bleached my mind of all joy.

It took two weeks to clean the bunker.

In the days that followed, there were congratulations for a job well done. There were back slaps and handshakes, safety meetings and pizza lunches. But no living creature visits the bunker without coming out worse for wear. Some creatures are blasted into fishy mist and flushed down the drain, others are robbed of their innocence and left a haunted husk. For all the mercurial vicissitudes of the mind, I knew but one thing for certain after that ordeal: “This isn't what I signed up for.”