Fish, our repentant ancestors

In Devonian times, around 400 million years ago, some of the fish that inhabited the world's oceans evolved, swapping fins and gills for legs and lungs in order to colonise dry land. It was a seminal event that subsequently gave rise to millions of species and, according to palaeontologists, makes them our ancestors.

‘Honestly, it was a mistake,’ says Boniface Eloy, director of the FISH (Fondements Ichtyologiques des Sociétés Humaines) laboratory in Brest and a descendant of fish. "If my ancestors had remained quietly at the bottom of the Panthalassa, I would never have spent an hour in the metro this morning and my former congeners would not be eating plastic and mercury off the coast of Saint-Brieuc.

This bitter assessment is shared by her colleague Amélie Hascoat, who co-authored an article published on Tuesday 1 April in the magazine Marine Melancholy. "You have to realise that back then, our only concerns were finding warm currents and a nice anemone to lay our eggs in. Today, I have to worry every day about a possible nuclear apocalypse and pay taxes. To tell you the truth, I'm rather looking forward to the rising waters we've been promised for years."

In the article, the scientists, whose ancestors were still living underwater barely 400 million years ago, give a non-exhaustive overview of the long-term consequences of this disastrous decision: the plagues of Egypt, rising rents, armed conflicts, pollution, drowning... All problems that did not arise for the aquatic populations of the Devonian period. But the researchers are also suggesting that nothing is irreversible and that they are already working on solutions.

‘Thanks to public funding, we have already been able to carry out gill grafting trials on healthy individuals, in order to reintroduce them into the natural environment of their ancestors,’ says Amélie Hascoat, who now lives in a converted tank. "We hope that, thanks to applied research, the Steve Jobs of the return to the sea will be French!

In a press release, the French Ministry of the Sea expressed its ‘dismay’ and announced that it had opened an investigation into...this April Fool's Day!