A fish-surgery class at the University of Melbourne
Credit: Glenn Hunt
Sushi ignored me. But she did the 'basketball dance' for Chapman, swimming in place, face against the glass, jerking back and forth and up and down. And Chapman did it right back. She put her red lipstick-covered lips a couple of centimetres from the tank opposite Sushi's. She clenched her fists, bent her elbows and knees, stuck out her butt and wiggled her body violently while making loud kissing noises. The more Chapman danced, the more Sushi danced. Then Roberts walked in the room saying, "Isn't he cute?" and Sushi hid. "Dr Roberts thinks she might be a boy, but Sushi is a girl's name." Chapman tapped the tank. "Don't be afraid, Dr Roberts makes you better."
Roberts is a petite "warm, fuzzy fish vet" whose no-nonsense appearance - no makeup, a thick black plastic sports watch - almost clashes with the turquoise contacts that make her eyes beautifully inhuman. She surrounds herself with pewter fish and glass fish; papier-mâché, metal, wood and stone fish; and of course, her pet fish: Splotch, Carrot, Harrison, Ford, The Golden One, and about 32 others, including B.O. (Big Orange), her favourite. "Come on, Sush," Roberts said. "I'm your friend."
I stared into Sushi's tank for hours. Chapman put the Twin Peaks theme song on repeat, and I thought, "Fun fish". She was active and sparkly, she swam back and forth, her muscles moving with the music in slow melodic waves. It was mesmerising. But to me she was more like a lava lamp than a pet. Then again, to her I was more like a piece of furniture than a human. I didn't feel Sushi's personality - I felt Roberts's and Chapman's. When Sushi swam by, their eyes widened, they smiled, touched the glass, said hello. When she turned, they said things like "Isn't he amazing?" and "She's so funny."
They know people might say they're crazy. "I don't care what people think," Chapman said. "I use my relationship with Sushi as a springboard for teaching special-education students about affection for unconventional people, like themselves." She stared into the tank, her voice suddenly serious. "It enlarges the world when you see how much possibility there is for loving people and animals who aren't usually given a chance."
The golden one finally stopped holding her breath, which meant Roberts could actually spay her. Well, at least that was the plan. "I'm pretty sure she's a female," Roberts said, "but it's always hard to tell with fish. If she turns out to be a boy, it's no big deal. We'll just neuter her." Roberts was born in England, and raised in Italy and the southern U.S. state of Georgia; her accent is soft, slightly rural and completely unidentifiable. "Goldfish are the rabbits of the fish world," she said when I asked why she was spaying her fish. "I don't want to face the ethical decision of what to do with all those babies."
Aside from the human-quality surgical instruments and monitors, the set-up was 100 per cent garden-supply store: one tub full of pond water and anaesthetic, clear plastic tubing attached to a submersible pump with duct tape. The Golden One lay on a plastic grate above the tub, yellow foam pad keeping her upright, tube in her mouth pumping anaesthetic water from the tub, through her gills, then back again. Like a recirculating fountain.
It's the same set-up used in the first account of pet fish surgery I could find, which was performed in 1993 and written about two years later by Greg Lewbart. Lewbart, a top fish vet, has short brown hair, greying sideburns and a soft blanket of freckles - like someone misted him with tan paint. "I don't tell my clients," he told me, hesitantly, "but I got into fish as a fisherman." He couldn't help laughing when he said this. "It's undeniably weird: I sometimes spend my weekends at the coast fishing." Then he paused. "I do mostly catch and release, but not always, and either way, it's unpleasant for the animal: I take the hook out, traumatise the fish, then throw it back in the water with a huge wound on its face or toss it into a cooler where it flops around for a few minutes. Then I go into work Monday, somebody brings in a goldfish, I console them, take their fish to surgery, then put it on post-operative pain medication."
