Adapt, Elias thought bitterly, meant fishermen stepping around influencers on their own dock. Adapt meant lights burning over spawning beds at midnight. Adapt meant drones hovering over his cabin window while strangers filmed themselves discovering “the melancholy soul of coastal labor.”
At first, the sea seemed patient. Elias still pulled modest catches from the inlets beyond the outer rocks. The fish were fewer, but not gone. He told himself they were unsettled by the noise and would return when the circus grew bored.