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Fish Story Memphis began as a story about what restoring fish habitat might mean to surviving human impacts on our ecosystems: the Anthropocene era. Memphis, home of Elvis and the blues, is critically located between factory farms North and dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico South, in the third largest watershed in the world on the sixth largest river. The story local fish tell us is that our world needs to pay more attention to saving our common environment than extracting fossil fuels and perpetuating unsustainable behavior. Fish Story was created as a model for other sites by Aviva Rahmani, working with Dr. Eugene Turner and Dr. James White.

Fish Story Memphis was an experiment in what I call trigger point theory the impact of climate change and the habitat restoration that may mitigate that impact. I conjectured that reconnecting the Wolf River (diverted by the Army Corps of Engineers) to the Mississippi River could have critical bioregional impact. We began researching that possibility, the relationship to other problems and how it might be a paradigm for other sites by canoeing a remote section of the Wolf May 4, 2013. Our goal for that trip was to see how restoration work is bringing back that formerly severely degraded system. The global implications were then discussed May 11, 2013 in the public webcast, “Connecting the River Dots.” (https://vimeo.com/67578327). Fish Story was initiated for “Memphis Social,” curated by Tom McGlynn, franchised and supported by apexart. – Aviva Rahmani

Fish Story Memphis 2013