Environment – Cruelty to fish

The wise old men of the western Enlightenment didn’t believe animals felt pain. Descartes questioned his own existence, so doubting the intelligence and sentience of animals is probably no surprise. He thought animals were just reflex-driven machines incapable of rational thought. These days, most people that live closely with cats, dogs or other animals know that they are smart, funny, loving, and even recognise the intelligence and sentience in us. Animals share with us relatively similar brain structures, neurological functions, intelligence capacity and social responses suited to their own particular environments. Mapping these functions scientifically shows animal intelligence and ability to feel pain.

Evidence shows that fish feel pain, too. They have proven pain receptors in the brain and show aversion to threats. They can have more capacity for colour reception than we do, long-lasting memories, exhibit social bonding, parenting, learned traditions, tool use and inter-species co-operation. They can recognise people and show preferences.

It’s been convenient for us to assume that because fish aren’t like us, they are unintelligent, do not feel pain and are not worthy of humane treatment. My mind boggles at the 70 billion animals kept in farms around the world every year and the potential for suffering that this entails. But compare that with the 100 billion farmed fish, and the three trillion wild-caught fish, and it’s on another scale altogether. A third of farmed fish are ground up for food for other animals, and the waste and bycatch from wild fisheries is legion.

When it’s recognised that fish feel pain, the implications are significant. It entails another duty to reduce harm, which is hard for people to bear. It’s much easier to treat fish as if they are the reflexive machines that Descartes describes. But in the catching and killing of fish, there’s bound to be barometric trauma as they are hauled from the deep – suffocation, crushing, fear, and often long, slow deaths.

Added concern should be shown for our native and endemic fish, endangered species and long-lived fish. Under pressure from overfishing, habitat loss and pollution, fish are at the bottom of the humane chain. Think about eels, who can live for decades, hauled up for ‘sport’ or cat food or export. Think about freshwater fish facing obstacles in their migratory pathways – their water levels depleted in quantity and quality, unnaturally warmed and deficient in life-giving oxygen. We know kiwi and kea feel pain, and are worthy of protection. We wouldn’t dream of eating a kiwi chick fritter, but whitebait fritters are an acceptable delicacy.

Kea used to be killed for bounty though, and these days we value what we’ve lost. It’s time we also valued the kea and the kiwi equivalents in the sea and fresh water. It’s time we recognised the sentience, ability to feel pain, intelligence, and intrinsic value of fish, and the moral obligations due them, too.

Christine Rose
christine.rose25@gmail.com