Is Fishing Worse Than Hunting?

Sep 30, 2019

“Now at last I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you anymore.”
–Franz Kafka

Hunting Is Evil

I’ve always disliked hunters, seeing them as despicable people committing heinous crimes against nature. I had some friends in high school that hunted, and I'll admit to having unpleasant feelings towards them about that; even though I knew they were generally good people, there was some part of me that couldn't reconcile with or forgive them for hunting. But at the same time, I was not vegan. I participated in my own form of animal cruelty by eating meat, dairy, eggs, and honey. I went to zoos, bought cosmetics tested on animals, and even went fishing sometimes.

Fishing was a fun (though often much more boring in retrospect) way to be outdoors, though I did have a few conditions: I wouldn’t use live bait (except for worms, but I didn’t like killing the worms either, which is why I preferred lures over everything else), I wouldn’t touch the bait (because dead flesh is gross) or the fish (because I’m a scaredy-cat), and all fish I caught had to be thrown back (no fish were dying on my watch). Now that I’ve been enlightened through veganism, I’ve seen the error of my ways, and I’ve come to the conclusion that fishing is actually far worse than the forms of hunting to which I had been so adamantly opposed.

Fish Are Animals (I Know, That's Shocking)

Fish are also living creatures, just like deer, squirrels, lions, and elephants. Soon after my dad switched to a plant-based diet, we got into a heated argument over his desire to continue fishing, even after watching What the Health. I asked him why he would still want to catch and eat fish, since – regardless of the animal suffering – he knows how bad meat is for the human body. His response was that fish isn’t meat, an idea he always perpetuated through the Lenten season by forgoing “meat” on Fridays and eating fish instead. Again, I asked why he thought that; fish are animals, aren’t they? No, he didn’t think they were. He said that fish are somehow different from land animals, though he didn’t have any real reasoning after my questioning. By this point, I was not able to keep my cool and was raising my voice at him, as I kept telling him that fish aren’t plants, that they have a nervous system, that they are living, feeling creatures just like the cows, pigs, rabbits, and goats he heard scream in Dominion. Obviously, this discussion didn’t end well, and he still fishes, more so for the social aspect of going out with his buddies and drinking beer than the act itself. I guess you can't have "bro time" without murder.

Fish Are Unworthy

It’s unfortunate that the majority of humans see fish in the same way as my father, "as if there were no moral distinction between a cod and a cucumber," as Dr. Jonathan Balcombe puts it in What a Fish Knows. While hunting is taboo in many places, the same cannot be said for fishing. Those that fish are not viewed the same way as those that hunt because fish have less inherent value to humans than wild land animals. Our speciesist society says that beings that look more different from humans are less worthy of life. Just like black people were seen as lesser humans than whites and women were seen as inferior to men. Though humans have the capacity for great intelligence, we are truly a stupid species. Isn’t the definition of insanity repeating the same things over and over and hoping for a different result? I guess we’re not that smart after all. But I digress.

Catch-and-Release

Reading The World Peace Diet by Dr. Will Tuttle truly opened my eyes to the suffering of fish and the tremendous toll catch-and-release takes on their physical and mental health. Indeed, the fish do suffer from this experience, and the trauma they incur often kills them, with studies ranging from five percent to 100 percent mortality rates.

This pain is compounded by being pulled and “played” on the line, which for the fish is an agonizing struggle leading to utter exhaustion. Being handled by the fisher damages the protective mucus layer on the fish’s scales; then, after inflicting more trauma removing the hook, the fisher tosses the wounded fish back to “fight” again another day.
-Dr. Will Tuttle,
The World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony

Fish Feel Pain, Especially Around Their Mouths

As if being ripped out of the ocean, stabbed through the lip with a metal hook, having the hook yanked out, and being thrown back into the water weren’t bad enough, fish are actually most sensitive around the mouth. While many fishermen and women claim that fish don’t actually feel anything there, Dad, that is merely a fabrication created by them, seeing as the fish can’t communicate their suffering to humans, to correlate with their existing belief that it is ok to hunt fish. Fish's screams are silent, and that makes them the most vulnerable beings on the planet.[1]

What If It Were You?

If we were to reverse the roles, this would be considered one of the cruelest forms of torture, like a scene straight out of a Saw movie. What if it were you? Hooking you through the mouth, if the hook is set properly, forcing you to pull against the agonizing pressure, undoubtedly causing your skin to rip in the process. Eventually, you’d tire and be pulled underwater to begin to drown, suffocating and unable to breathe, your lungs burning as you start to die. Then, the barbed metal is ripped out of your bleeding mouth, and you’re thrown onto land, air crashing back into your lungs as your body smacks onto the earth. If you survived all that, good luck dealing with the emotional (and physical) trauma of almost being horrifically murdered.

Deadly Weapons

In fact, catch-and-release is so barbaric that it’s illegal in Germany, something I was not too keen on learning in my high school German class when I still thought my “humane” form of fishing was fun; of course, German fishers have to kill the fish they catch, which is still terrible. This does, however, bring up another point. It is far too easy to get a fishing license in America. Virtually anyone with 20 or 30 dollars to spare can get one and start to legally kill animals. I won’t claim to be an expert on hunting licenses, but I’m sure that there are more stringent procedures, seeing as we can’t let just anyone have access to guns. A six- or seven- or eight-year-old child should not be allowed to fish. Even though I think all forms of hunting and fishing should be illegal, children have no clue how to “properly” handle living animals in these situations, and it can often lead to additional suffering on the fish (or whatever else they may accidentally catch).

Fish's Inner Lives

It shouldn’t even be necessary to say this, as a fish’s life is valuable simply because it belongs to the fish, who has an interest in staying alive, but fish are actually emotionally complex beings.[2] They have individual personalities, enjoy playing, and experience “human” emotions like happiness, stress, and grief.[3,4] We are so quick to “dehumanize” them, to make them an “other” from us, that we refuse to acknowledge the fact that they are quite similar to us and to the animals we choose to love, like dogs and cats.[5] Animal rights groups like Sea Shepherd are not strictly vegan, but most people working for them are. Because if someone can see fish and marine animals as sentient individuals worthy of life, they can see that in all other creatures. This is actually why I chose Kafka’s quote for this post, because he said that as he looked at a fish after going vegetarian. Finally, he saw them as individuals, not as food.

Murder: Fun For the Whole Family!

As I live on an island (and I don’t just mean my personal vegan bubble), anytime I go to the beach, there are people fishing. It’s usually older men, but in the summertime, families seem to enjoy doing this together. I won’t lie, I feel disgusted and appalled by even walking near them, as if my proximity to them is somehow giving my consent that I believe it’s ok for them to do this.

Destroying the Shores

Spending time on this swath of heavily-fished beach, I’ve come to notice something that is often left out of the conversation: fishermen and women are not environmentalists, trying to clear the oceans and lakes of "pest" species, as hunters do with deer or boar. Usually, they do it purely for sport, not because they care about the ocean or its creatures. As we learned in Cowspiracy, many ocean conservancy organizations support "ethical" fish products, not the elimination of fish products.[6]

While this is mostly focusing on large fishing companies, even the individual fisher is not exempt from unnecessary levels of cruelty in their practices. As I’m walking, I often find cigar and cigarette butts littered on the shore; lines, hooks, nets, and sinkers left after lazy fishers; plastic bottles and bags strewn about; fishing near people and children in the water, though there is supposedly a mandatory distance to be kept apart from swimmers; seagulls and shorebirds circling dangerously close to the lines stretching from beach to water, drawn in by the fish already caught and the smelly bait, and making them susceptible to getting caught in lines or nets while flying or diving for fish; and worst of all, dead animals left to rot.

The Forgotten "Bait" Animals

People throw their dead bait onto the ground like garbage. Here, this is usually shrimp. Many times, I’ve almost stepped on a frail little shrimp body on the ground, cast aside from a fisher that bought too many and didn’t think they were worth saving for next time. He’d just buy more dead bodies when he needed them. Even with just small fishing operations like this, many animals die in order for fishers to enjoy their kill sport.

I have very few regrets from my pre-vegan life, because I was oblivious to the harm I was causing, but my participation in fishing is one of the things about which I feel guilty. I genuinely hated when my dad bought worms for us to use, and after I finally got up the courage to touch them, I couldn’t pierce them with the hook. I preferred to just hold them in my hand, to feel their bodies wriggle around, and gaze at them in wonder. But instead of abstaining and using lures, I let him do it. Though I don’t know the level of worm sentience, by the way they writhe and wriggle, I most certainly know they feel pain. And being stabbed multiple times through various parts of their bodies…it just seems too cruel to allow. How they cling to life for so long after the stabbing, trying with all the might they can muster to be free of their torture. Every time I'd reel in the line, I prayed that the worm was finally dead, its misery over at last; but then it would struggle futilely, squirming ever so slightly as the very last of its life drained from its small, fragile body. It makes me cry just thinking about it: how easy it has become for us to take the life of other beings. Bait animals are often forgotten, but I will always remember.

Filling the Ocean with Plastic

While this post is mainly about fishing at the individual level, I’d be remiss to not take this opportunity to discuss the main killer of our oceans: industrial fishing. For every pound of targeted fish caught, there are five pounds of bycatch – other marine animals like sharks, dolphins, whales, seals, turtles, birds, and other fish species – that are caught and killed in the process.[5] Additionally, 46 percent of the plastic in oceans comes from fishing, while every straw in the world makes up only 0.1 percent.[7] Yes, switching to a metal, glass, or wooden straw is great, but the real problem killing fish is the business of killing fish. Go figure, right?

Fishing Will Be the Death of Us All

The ocean is dying, and if it does succumb to its injuries, we all die with it. In fact, all this plastic in the ocean is leading to even more deaths than the obvious ones we can see. As the plastics dissolve, microplastics – microscopic, broken-down bits of plastic – are becoming a very real threat to ocean life. The small plastics are often mistaken for plankton, at the bottom of the food chain, and baby fish, believing them to be food, eat them. This often kills them, as their tiny little bodies can’t process the plastic, but those that survive suffer immensely. Because fish are so small when they’re born, they must eat large amounts of food continuously; if they don’t, they die, and starvation – along with predation – is already one of the main causes of death for larval fish. When ultimately eaten by larger animals, all the plankton and small fish – meaning all that plastic – accumulates in their system, causing massive waves of devastation.[8] Imagine how quickly marine life could be wiped out as more and more of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch starts to break down. There will be more plastic in the ocean than animals.[9]

Consider Your Choices

I hope this has been an enlightening read for you, and it was certainly one of the things I’ve been most eager to discuss. Every time I go to the beach, I usually leave feeling angry. I often get worked up and feel overwhelmed by the cruelty with which I’m confronted while I’m just trying to have a nice walk on the beach with my dog. Even being vegan before moving here, I didn’t have such a visceral reaction, a hatred, toward fishing as I do now. I’m still working on my dad, sending him various articles and videos to read and watch. Hopefully, he’ll soon see the error of his ways, as I hope for all carnists. To conclude, I'll leave you with a quote from Dr. Balcombe's enthralling book written not just about fish, but "on behalf of fish."[4]

"[E]ach fish is a unique individual, not just with a biology, but with a biography."
-Dr. Jonathan Balcombe,
What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins