Fish Kills Spear-fisher
In what can only be called an act of self-defense, and that’s if the events as portrayed in "Fish kills spear-fishing diver off Florida" (Miami, Reuters, 09/14/06) are accurate, a Florida diver was killed by a large grouper.
Let’s deconstruct:
- 42- year-old man shoots grouper with spear gun.
- Grouper allegedly "wrapped the line attached to the spear around the victims’s wrist."
- Grouper swims into a hole in a rock, "effectively pinning the man to the bottom of the ocean."
First of all, how do we know that the grouper did that and there wasn’t some kind of swimming, pulling, and struggling that resulted in the man being pinned? Second of all, the grouper had a spear in him (even when he was found in the hole), so as far as I’m concerned, the act was clearly in self-defense.
The article didn’t say, but I’d bet my entire net worth that the police divers who found the man killed the already-injured grouper.
This is a fine time, in my humble opinion, to address the often-overlooked reality that fishing hurts. Fish have the same ability to feel pain and experience pleasure as dogs, cats, and horses. Would you spear any of them? Okay, maybe if you think rodeos are a fine idea. But in that case I’m not sure I could ever convince you that causing terror and pain to others isn’t a "sport."
Attached is the cleverly-titled white paper, "Fish Feel Pain" (Download FishFeelPain.pdf). Read it, visit FishingHurts.com, and then pass the info on to your friends and family who think that catch-and-release fishing isn’t cruel and unnecessary (and deadly–as many as 43% of fish released die within six days), and eating fish is healthy.
I wouldn't label this "self-defense." It is just instinct for an animal to defend itself. Grouper just naturally go into caves when injured, and this guy just got unlucky.
As far as the whole "fishing hurts fish" thing…this is spearfishing. I don't think anybody is arguing that a spear in a fish doesn't hurt a fish. There are many irresponsible spearfishermen that take bad shots at fish and leave a fish injured. There are also many people who make sure they have a good shot on a fish and make it as quick as possible for the fish.
As far as regular fishing hurting fish, it probably does, but I don't think it is something the fish worry too much about. I have spent thousands of hours underwater….fish don't eat pudding and bread….they eat other fish with sharp spines….they eat clams and oysters…they eat sea urchins and sting rays…they eat coral. Most of their mouths are designed to take a lot of damage. I'm not saying it is ok to go out a mutilate fish for fun, and I'm not saying all, or even most, fishermen are being as gentle with the fish they catch as possible, BUT as a marine biologist I would have to say that fishing doesn't hurt the fish anymore then it hurts you to trip and skin your knee…..sure it hurts and you'll probably complain, but in a week or two you will have forgotten about it.
I can tell you your chances of stopping people from doing recreational fishing is probably way less then 0.00001%. Many fish are delicious. I can say I don't agree with a lot of fishing techniques and commercial fishing, as a whole, is an awful institution.
In nature there are predators and prey. We are omnivores, naturally. We are certainly taking way more then we should and upsetting the natural balance, but this doesn't mean we should stop all killing. We have canine teeth and incisors meant for meat. You don't cry when a lion takes 1 to 10 minutes to kill its prey because that is nature. Humans just need to find a way to not be such a drain on nature…not stop being part of nature all together.
You can argue that eating fish is wrong, but if we all started only eating fruits and veggies, can you imagine how many more trees would be cleared for "needed" farm land. The world population is too large for the natural growth of enough fruits and veggies to sustain the population. Plus, imagine all the gas/oil and pollution from moving these goods around the planet to places where there isn't enough land for enough food to be grown. I know there is already tons of waste and pollution made feeding the people already, but if we cut out an entire food group, the other food groups will just take too much pressure. Our population is just way too large now for there to be any perfect solution. The environment is going to be greatly hurt no matter what we do. The thing to do now is try and reduce the damage as much as possible and try and replace/replenish as much as possible. It's crap, but it is the best we can do for now. If you just try and stop people from doing something all together, they are just going to get further away from your cause.
I don't work for fisheries or anything else. I mainly do my own, independent research….usually field studies on shark behavior. I have lived my entire life on the water and I feel a great need for conservation and proper stewardship of the earth.
Sorry if you don't like this. It is just how I see things after spending my entire life traveling all over this planet. I try and make as little impact as possible, but even if all 7 billion of us made the smallest footprint possible, we would still be causing a great deal of damage. Unless you know of a way to slowly make the population drop down to less then half of what it is now without being cruel or committing genocide, this planet will always be under more stress then it should be…
Ben, I can't speak for the author, but many of us do feel that the way a lion kills is unneccesarily cruel. Evolution's a slow and clumsy process, and we should feel obligated to do better than following its worst examples. Being 'naturally omnivorous' may have made sense for us at one point in our history, but where we don't have to kill nonhuman animals to survive we can do better without them. We have the digestive system of frugivores, like other primates.
"I wouldn't label this "self-defense." It is just instinct for an animal to defend itself."
Which is just another way of saying self-defense. We could say the same thing about people. The difference is that you're choosing to define an animal's agency out from under them; having instincts doesn't make an animal mindless.
You may disagree with commercial fishing, but it's not likely that everyone is going to start spear-fishing (let's say for the sake of argument that spear-fishing is humane). As long as people find fish tasty, they're going to suffer painful, protracted deaths aboard fishing boats.
"The environment is going to be greatly hurt no matter what we do. The thing to do now is try and reduce the damage as much as possible and try and replace/replenish as much as possible."
Veganism is a way of reducing the damage. No, it isn't perfect, but it uses less resources than growing plants for animals to consume, and it doesn't deplete wild fish stocks. There's a large consensus on this among ecologists. The UN recently released a statement endorsing vegan diets, and if you take an ecological footprint quiz it will factor in whether you are vegan or not. Also, while we should be eating more local food, animal products have been found to have a much larger carbon footprint than transportation.
That said, would it be right to kill animals even if doing so was "green" and saved resources? I really don't think so. Shifting to an argument about ecology obscures the lives and pain of individual animals. And we've seen from our own history that appeals to sacrifice individuals for some greater good rarely have nice results.
"If you just try and stop people from doing something all together, they are just going to get further away from your cause."
You can't always aim for popularity or for the quickest fix. Societies can and have changed. Cruel practices can and have been abolished. Veganism, abolition of eating animals, is anti-cruelty. Better that it happens sooner because people advocated for it today, rather than later because we advocated something else.