Crabapple Creek was flooded with diesel. We know there were fish in the creek. We know because people put them there and you could easily see them swimming in the water. The fish put there were salmon. Chum and coho salmon travel to Crabapple Creek and spawn there, the eggs incubate and hatch, and the alevins live in the gravel interstices and, later still, swim free.
Chums migrate quickly to salt water and coho stay a year or so, until they smolt.
That's when they're ready to live in the saline sea. Fish need oxygen and food. A drop of kerosene was once the prescription for the control of mosquitoes - killed the larvae. So, we people trot out the law. Much later, when the court date happens, we argue a bunch of words by procedure, point some fingers and bang the gavel.