When you are writing speculative environmental fiction about future worlds (as in the solarpunk and cli-fi genres) you embellish present-day technology with marvelous new features. When your invented world is based on history, you research and repurpose features of past cultures.
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Eels!
My original encounters with eels were not pleasant. My mother, fond of roasted eel, liked me to catch them for her with a drop line. All the other fish I hauled onto the dock flopped about and died of natural causes. An eel, however, was a living breathing nightmare. It failed to drown in the air, so I had to bash it over the head with a hammer.
Coracles!
Ever since the summer when I was nine years old and my family lived on a boat moored in a New England harbor, I have loved small boats. We had great big Elco cruiser, but in order to play with my friends I rowed our little dinghy ashore. Nowadays I am utterly content to ply a stout little kayak up and down the Betsie, a narrow, winding river in northwest Michigan.