MGOOLILF

Or

That time they saved Moses from the Nile River and bungled his rescue by the Pharoahs wife, so they were stuck in an 80s sitcom situation.

Obviously, the goal of this experiment is to grow the lobsters until they’re big enough to settle to the seabed and then release them, because they have a much higher likelihood of surviving to adulthood when they’re able to hide. Ideally, captive lobster hatcheries can boost the wild population and keep things stable, so we don’t have a major crash in a decade or two.

The first year we tried this was pretty bad. We had a lot of eggs, but very few babies. It turned out that the CO2 levels in the building spiked as more guests visited throughout the summer, and that settled into the water and threw off the pH and caused a chemical reaction that prevented a lot of the eggs from hatching. I think we ended up releasing three baby lobsters (which is still better than their wild survival rate but not great).

The second year was a little better. We added a de-gasser to the aquarium and got a ton of larval lobsters, but right as they were settling to the bottom we had a disease outbreak that killed most of them. We ended up releasing four babies at the end of the season.

But this year? Oh boy. We have so many lobsters that we had to release the first round early (usually we wait till September or October so guests can see them). We just released a total of FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE baby lobsters, and we still have over a hundred who haven’t settled to the bottom yet. I genuinely don’t even have words to explain how cool this is. OVER FIVE HUNDRED. We just added hundreds of lobsters to the wild population that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

And like... you do get that that is kinda insane, right?

Because this is something that so often leads to suffering. And I am saying this as someone disabled, who had so many issues due to this in his childhood.

Just three examples: when I was 7, I was supposed to get checked for autism. My mother did not want an autistic child. Since she just could have a "neurotypical" child by refusing diagnosis, she did just that.

When I was 12, my mother had decided I needed a certain plastic surgery (one that had a minor health benefit, but still was largely a beauty thing). I did not want it. I really, really did not want it. We still went through almost the entire process until thankfully there was a doctor who went: "Wait, this is elective. I am refusing to do this on a child that does not want it."

And when I was 14 my mother refused to get me to the hospital when I had severe food poisoning. She refused me hospital treatment for almost two weeks. By the time I got actually taken to the hospital I was almost dead.

And here is the thing: all of this should just not happen. The doctor when I was 12 was cool, but... he refused to do the surgery because he had the right to make a conscience call. Legally my mother was in the right to force me into that elective surgery. And that just should not be the case.

A lot of children die and suffer due to their legal inability to consent - or refuse consent - to medical treatments. And I wish y'all would understand that.

Consider: a parent takes a child in for a flu shot. The child is afraid it will hurt, so they refuse it. The child is now unprotected. If enough children refuse vaccination, we now have pandemics on our hands.

A child doesn't like the taste of their medicine (valid) and so refuses to take it, at all. Their illness gets worse.

A child has an accident that's not actually that bad from an adult standpoint but is horribly traumatic from a child's standpoint--let's say a broken arm. Touching the arm hurts horribly, but it can't be set or put in a cast without touching it. The child is still in hysterics because this is the worst thing that has ever happened to them, and injures themselves worse before calming down enough to consent to treatment.

By claiming a white author is simply "sheltered and autistic" to shield them from criticism for racism and more, you are not only demonstrating White Fragility, you are actively being ableist by equating autstic people as being incapable of learning to.... not be racist or bigoted.

Especially because, you know...

Black autistic people exist?

Autistic trans women exist?

Fat autistic people exist?

Autistic intersex people exist?

Autistic women exist?

And all of these people experience the bigotries in this book, and are all equally capable of *not* being bigoted?

And equally, that autism does not mean someone is inherently bigoted?? ? And insisting that all autistic people *must* be incapable of unlearning bigotry (which is what you are inherently doing, when you try to shield someone from criticism by saying "well you can't blame them, they're autistic")

If someone is autistic and racist, it's not because they're autistic.

It's because they are racist, and refuse to unlearn their racism.

Stop using "the author is autistic" to shield that author from critique on their racism.

Autism is not a shield against critique, and using it as such is inherently ableist.

You are literally infantilizing people, and yourself, if you do this.