SIGHT: A day with New York City’s fish rescuer

Brenda Prohaska sits in the driver’s seat of her hearse, at a standstill on the Hutch, flicking through messages on her phone with one long red fingernail and dictating replies with no punctuation: “I will be there in twenty-five minutes how many are there”;  “I wasn’t going to take the tank do you have a Chinese food container or large ziplock.” In the back of the hearse are two Lowe’s paint buckets lined with plastic bags holding eight aquarium fish—three oscars, a catfish, and four cichlids. Brenda just picked them up from an elderly woman in Yonkers who was no longer able to care for them. She is en route to Pelham to deliver the fish to an Albanian superintendent who has several aquariums in the office of his apartment complex. It’s another day in the life of Brenda, in her occasional role as New York City’s self-designated volunteer fish rescuer.

New Yorkers get rid of pet fish for all sorts of reasons, from the expected—moving, breakups, illness, picky landlords, financial troubles—to the unexpected, such as foundling fish in a funeral parlor’s basement pool, or a controversial community goldfish pond in a Bed-Stuy fire hydrant puddle. But when you need someone with a big bucket, a big net, a big car, and a big heart, Brenda is the person to call. For her volunteer-run, Facebook-based service, NYC Fish Rescue (which, incidentally, is the first Google search result for “fish rescue” anywhere), Brenda’s ideal role is as a matchmaker: taking fish from a place where they are no longer wanted, to a place where they are—or, even better, matching unwanted fish with new caretakers, and having the parties involved handle the logistics. But if there is no immediate home in mind, she brings them to her house on City Island, where she was born and raised. She doesn’t screen prospective adopters: “Some people call and they want a fish, and all I ask is what size tank they have, and then I hope for the best. There are no adoption forms. I can’t be too fussy.”

Brenda shares her cozy home, which has a purple front door and a sign reading “The Love Boat,” with her teenage son and boyfriend (who not only puts up with the fish-rescue chaos but calls her several times in the hearse to tell her how much he loves her). Inside, two dogs scamper around eating purloined Chinese takeout; an attack Chihuahua is sequestered in a back room. The dominant sound is the hum and bubble of no fewer than six aquariums scattered between her front hallway, living room, home office, dining room, and even the bathroom.

Sea-themed tchotchkes abound, given the island locale—a “Seas the Day” kitchen towel, a list of “Beach Rules” like “Live a Porpoiseful Life” and “Make Friends, Not Anemones”—which seem to sum up her spirit toward fish, New York City, and life in general. Brenda gets to work siphoning water and transferring the latest batch of unwanted fish into their new home.

When she’s not driving fish around town, Brenda teaches cosmetology at an alternative high school; sells real estate; does occasional catering gigs; and helps her sister, who owns horse stables, run pony rides, mobile petting zoos, and funerals requiring horse-drawn hearses, of which she is one of the few local purveyors. Despite her lifesaving inclinations, Brenda is fond of funerals: “I like the dark side, you know,” she says. And she admits, “The juggle is the hardest part of my life, but it’s also where I thrive. Different fish, different personalities, different places. I have to stay busy, but I try not to get stressed.” Among her clients, she says, she has “some people who are ready to kill the fish, and others who are crying when I arrive because they feel so guilty that they can’t care for them.” Her biggest source of worry, in fact, is a possible power outage and all the tanks and air and filters and thermometers in her house turning off. The constant bubble and hum would abruptly cease, and many funerals—and tiny hearses—would surely be in order.

Brenda, who is fifty-three, began rescuing fish in the wake of a bad breakup, right before Covid, while she was recovering from stage 4 melanoma. Despite her ambivalence about fish, her ex had given her an aquarium, but all the fish died. A friend connected her with Horst Gerber, the president of the Greater City Aquarium Society, based in Long Island. He invited her to the group’s next meeting, as well as to a fish auction. There was no going back: Soon he was sending her emails about fish that needed rescuing, and Brenda found she couldn’t say no. Before she knew it, she was taking home entire aquariums and trying to find a place for them in her house. Then she decided to set up the Facebook page.

Around this time, she happened to buy a Cadillac hearse on a lark from a Connecticut “haunted attraction”—but she quickly realized the capacious, stable trunk was ideal for transporting blocky aquariums and buckets of water. During the heart of the pandemic, given her need to stay busy, she found herself unmoored when she was stuck at home on weekends. The fish rescue business gave her a sense of mission. Brenda doesn’t work alone. She has two reliable partners: Mike in Staten Island as well as Laboy in Pennsylvania, who helps her with larger rescues; Laboy also maintains the Facebook page. Brenda would like to make an official business of the effort—and even has a dubious logo in mind: twin fish skeletons, to satisfy her dark side—but she has too many lines in the water, so to speak.

Brenda says she is “a giver,” and she believes people are good at heart. For the most part that faith in humanity has played out in her rescues. Though she isn’t trusting enough to enter a stranger’s home alone—she always brings along a companion—when she walks into someone’s apartment with her buckets and fish net and siphon, most of the time the people she meets are gracious and grateful. (But don’t get her started on the guy in Long Island with the fish pond, the family photo shoot, the hornets…)

Brenda estimates she’s done at least 150 rescues since 2019. She has countless stories, of course. One time she hit the brakes and a tank of forty fish tipped over in the trunk. She quickly pulled into a nearby Key Food, bought a bottle of spring water for the bucket, and scooped in the fish, who were flopping all over the back seat. “I remember driving to fucking Brooklyn in the torrential rain once because someone had left out fish by the garbage in the projects and they didn’t want the super to throw them away,” she recalls. Another time she got a call from a gym that had iridescent sharks who had bloodied their faces from banging into the sides of a too-small tank. Although she admits, “Honestly, at this point I’d be okay with no fish,” she has her favorites at home, who she claims recognize her.

En route to Yonkers, Brenda’s phone rings. The elderly woman requesting the pickup asks in a trembling voice: “Is there a charge? Because I don’t have no money.” “Don’t worry, I got you,” Brenda reasures her, piloting the hearse onto the exit ramp. In the woman’s living room—in a high rise apartment complex—is a murky tank containing the aforementioned eight fish, who all need to go. The woman explains she is battling cancer, is moving out, and can’t manage the aquarium anymore. She gazes tenderly at the fish nosing the glass.

Brenda tries to scoop up the biggest oscar, who fights her lustily, whipping his tail against the gravel and muddying the water so it’s almost impossible to locate the remaining fish. Desperately, the woman snakes a siphon hose from the aquarium through her apartment to the kitchen sink, and begins pumping it to lower the water level and make the fish easier to spot from above. Meanwhile, Brenda gropes blindly in the water with her net. Finally she manages to pin the largest oscar against the side of the tank and pulls him out, flopping madly, and flips him into a bucket. She removes her sweater, fans her face, and takes a deep breath. Only seven more to go.

Once all eight fish are accounted for, she takes them down to the hearse, which is parked in a no-parking zone (hearses rarely get parking tickets).

Next stop: Pelham, to release the eight fish to Tony, the Albanian super, who has adopted Brenda’s fish in the past. But Tony isn’t around when she pulls up, and he sends his wife instead, who approaches Brenda, jangling her car keys. “I don’t know why he keeps these fish. Those are huge. How much did they cost?” She eyes the three buckets. “They are free! They are rescues!” Brenda says, cheerfully scooping them one by one into Tony’s giant aquariums. When one of the fish flips around in the net and water splashes out, Tony’s wife yelps and jumps back.

On another stop, in Gowanus, a man leads Brenda into his apartment, which smells of last night’s curry, and where a rescue cat named Mr. Meat prowls around. One of his angelfish has been too agressive toward the others, he explains, and he needs to re-home her. Ever the matchmaker, as Brenda begins to siphon water, she offers him a bunch of cherry barbs she will be collecting on a later pickup, to replace the angelfish—which will have to come back to City Island for the time being.

After the fish is in the bucket, he asks her advice on the most humane way to euthanize fish, if it were ever to be necessary as a last resort. They agree that putting a few drops of clove oil into the aquarium is the most ethical way. “I’ll be honest, that’s one of the things I considered doing,” the man admits. Mr. Meat hops up onto the kitchen table. As he strokes the cat’s head, he says, “I don’t believe in buying real pets when there are so many that need homes. But fish, on the other hand—I will buy them.” When we get back to the car, Brenda puts the angelfish in the trunk and settles into the driver’s seat with a sad huff. “But fish are real pets!” she says. “Otherwise, why would I be here?”