In Fishing Clash, every new fishery allows us to tune into a different rhythm of our planet – and only a few places echo the same ancient stories and vibrant life as Kakadu National Park in Australia’s northern wilderness.

Located in the Northern Territory, approximately 150 kilometers (95 miles) east of the city of Darwin, Kakadu spans nearly 20,000 square kilometers (7,700 square miles) of wetlands, sandstone escarpments, rivers, and floodplains. People have lived there for at least 65,000 years, making it one of the oldest known continuous cultural presences on Earth. To this day, Kakadu remains a living cultural landscape, cared for by its Traditional Owners, the Bininj/Mungguy peoples, whose knowledge continues to guide how the land and its waters are understood.

Our steps into a land of such significance, and the words we speak, should be thoughtful and respectful, as the stories, songs, and artworks of Kakadu are as old as human culture itself. For this reason, today’s article, appearing alongside the release of our new in-game fishery, will follow one of Kakadu’s underwater residents, a creature of darkness, a humble fish rarely caught for sport, but one of great importance to local aquatic ecosystems: the Neosilurus ater, known as the black catfish or the narrowfront tandan. We will also explore the animals that have become our staple metaphors and consider how this beautiful, albeit reclusive, fish could make its way into our dictionary of animal-related symbols.

The kingdom of metaphor

The animal kingdom has always been a source of inspiration and knowledge, a unique mirror into what we wish to become and what we desire to represent. Serpents, since ancient times, have symbolized death and rebirth through their venom and ability to shed their skin; they were often used as literary devices to embody both temptation and healing. In Aboriginal cosmology, the Rainbow Serpent shapes the landscape and brings rain – the powers of creation and destruction intertwined. The eagle, hawk, and falcon have served as symbols of clarity, divine sight, and sovereignty. In Indigenous North American nations, eagles are revered as messengers between the Earth and the Spirit. The owl embodied insight and the paradox of knowledge: its ability to see through darkness was seen as both a gift and a curse. In European folklore, the owl was seen as a harbinger of death or revelation, with the latter being an extension of the former, as revelation brings a sort of death to the status quo.

As humanity grew in power and, quite undoubtedly, in hubris, the animals that have followed us into the modern day represent that accurately. The lion has become a caricature in the language of today’s internet memes. The feline symbol of dominion had its own saying, “The lion doesn’t concern itself with the opinions of sheep.” This is a compact power fantasy, dressed in words, where the lion symbolizes strength, sovereignty, and natural superiority, whereas the sheep are seen as weak, conformist, and fearful. The saying promised relief from anxiety: stop caring what others think; you’re above them. Nowadays, it’s reposted, shared, and altered, not always in an ironic manner. It pretends to free us from opinion, but it actually traps us in it, as we’re still measuring ourselves against the “sheep,” while checking the number of likes. It becomes a neat trick, our ego’s sleight of hand. A dependence disguised as autonomy.

The wolf followed a similar path. Once a creature of pack and season, bound by cooperation and ritual, it has become, in modern language, the perfect emblem of self-mythologizing: the lone wolf. A distortion born of our fascination with independence and silent genius. The real wolf thrives through kinship and coordination, necessities of collective survival – but the symbolic wolf has been severed from its pack, wandering our cultural imagination as the pure ego of autonomy. We dress it in leather jackets, corporate suits, and LinkedIn slogans. It howls not to find others, but to remind itself it needs no one. Yet this, too, is a trick of pride: the worship of solitude that conceals our dependence on the pack we keep denying.

The shark was never glamorized in old stories, it simply was – a presence of efficiency and instinct. In our modern world, we have turned it into an aspirational archetype. “Be a shark,” we romanticize in business. Always moving, always winning, smelling blood in the water. Its endless motion, once the rhythm of survival, has become our metaphor for productivity and hunger disguised as ambition. But the shark’s myth reveals our nature. We project our restlessness onto it – our terror of stillness. The creature that must keep swimming to survive has become the mascot of a species that can’t stop consuming. In admiring its ruthlessness, we mistake compulsion for purpose, our endless appetite reshaped into a virtue.

The overlooked forces of change

A society relies on the animals it desires to imitate, regardless of how well it twists and bends the original symbol to fit its current narrative. In today’s world, not many of us would take notice of Kakadu’s narrowfront tandan, the black catfish. Yet, it seems to be a fish that represents what we’re losing with each passing minute: distance, patience, and a purposeful but connected solitude. While other fish fight for the surface, the catfish tends the bottom, cleaning what the river leaves behind. It consumes decay and returns it to the cycle, turning waste into nourishment. By doing so, it clears the river, similarly to other unsung heroes of change, wherever they are needed.

Fungi weave through soil, roots, and leaf litter, dissolving fallen trees into nutrients, communication, and new life. Earthworms turn the ground itself, aerating and enriching it with each slow passage. Beetles and microbes break down what our eye no longer recognizes as life, stitching it back into the great fabric of growth, dissolving what’s left of abundance.

These creatures dismantle what was once vibrant, speck by speck, atom by atom, until it becomes fertile again. They are the quiet forces of renewal, the invisible labor that keeps the living world from collapsing under its own weight. The black catfish belongs to them: not a hunter, but a keeper, turning what dies into what grows.

It’s a creature that doesn’t chase light, spectacle, or conflict, but moves through the dark with patience and precision, sensing the world through touch and vibration. Its work is not glamorous, yet it remains vital. It’s an act of quiet maintenance that keeps Kakadu’s rivers breathing. In its stillness lies a different kind of wisdom: not a bloodthirsty desire to dominate, but the will to belong, to keep the world turning gently, endlessly, without applause. If the black catfish were to become a symbol used by mankind, it could represent change and transformation through its ability to sense, feel, and be patient. Something that’s not very likely to show up in our dictionaries of metaphors anytime soon… unless we allow our imagination to shine alongside our desire to reshape the world.