The political correctness of fish names
Why in Florida we have started calling dolphin fish, mahi-mahi
I’m in the early chapters of the first draft of Wood’s Gamble. Mac is out on the water running a search pattern looking for signs of a shipwreck in about sixty feet of water. He looks out to sea and sees boats trolling—and then I wrote a blistering rant that probably won’t see the light of the second draft. I do that a lot—it’s where I get a lot of the themes from my books from. My protagonists are not me, but they all carry a part of me.
This time it starts with a question that’s bothered me for a while: why have Florida fishermen started calling dolphin fish, Mahi-mahi? I guess there’s nothing wrong with it—they’re the same fish. Depending on the geographic location the fish is called: dolphin, dorado, or mahi-mahi. I started fishing the offshore waters of the Florida Keys in the '80s and they were always called dolphin. In Mexico and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, they are dorado, and in Hawaii they are mahi-mahi. Same fish, no big deal, right?
The ’80s were a long time ago. The first dolphin I caught was in 1988, it’s almost 35 years. I have to admit there was always some confusion. When I talked to people and said I’d been dolphin fishing, many were like, Flipper? You were fishing for Flipper?
And then came the Clintons and the age of political correctness. Among other things, dolphin are now mahi-mahi in Florida.
The Keys have changed in recent years. Key West aside, what was once a refuge for divers and fishermen has become a hundred-twenty-mile party. The two groups don’t necessarily mix. Identifying who belongs in each group isn’t difficult. One of the ways is by what people call the popular fish.