by So my lovely girlfriend, an aspiring biology major, has a wealth of science books in her library. Well this particular book caught my attention as for the past half year I have been debating going back to school for a degree in biology/zoology/ethology, the last two especially since my biomedical engineering degree pretty much covers basic biology.
Now this book is raising many ethical issues which I have known, but never really considered and the biggest that has hit home has been my outlook on fishing.
For the longest time I had been boycotting fish bought from the grocery store or fish sold in restaurants mainly because commercial fishing as been destroying marine ecosystems and unilaterally are causing entire fish populations to go extinct. Soon within my lifespan if the rate continues there may no longer be tuna fish in the seas.
But my real talk is not about commercial fishing which is a problem this generation needs to address. It is about the fact that fish, like other animals, respond to pain in ways which we would call suffering.
All living things react to painful stimuli. But there is a difference between a reaction to painful stimuli and a suffering that comes after it.
If you recoil your hand from a hot stove that is a reaction to painful stimuli. If your cognitive skills like memory becomes impaired because of the pain from the stimuli that is called suffering.
And studies show that fish once hooked in numerous of areas including inside the mouth and then forced out of water to suffocate are indeed experiencing pain...excruciatingly. So catch and release may actually be causing more harm to the fish than the casual hobbyist may realize. Once back in the water the fish still are experiencing the pain much like we still experience the pain of a cut or burn after it happens. This slows the fish's reaction time when it comes to escaping a predator, or navigating through the body of water he or she calls home. In other words it is impairing the cognitive skills of the fish, and fish can think despite common misconceptions, and thus is suffering.
I don't know if I can willingly catch and release fish now because of this. I knew fish were capable of thinking, but I never realized how much pain and suffering a fish could experience when hooked, reeled in, and released.
Bummer.
