(CN - HK) Life and death in a tank

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South China Morning Post

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How much do reef fish suffer before we eat them?

By Simon Parry

Apr 12, 2009

 

The waiter serves up a generous helping of hyperbole with his sales patter

as he points to a giant grouper gawping out of a neon-lit fish tank outside

a seafront restaurant in Sai Kung.

" This is a very special fish - it is more than 100 years old, " he says,

gesturing to the fish struggling to turn its metre-long body in the confines

of the tank. " If you want to eat it, it will cost you around HK$500,000. You

will need a very big party to get through it all. "

 

For months now, this magnificent creature has been on show to passers-by,

working its way onto hundreds of snapshots as it tries to circle in the tank

that suddenly became its home after decades cruising the depths of the

Indian Ocean.

 

Capture brought no quick death for this or dozens of other large exotic fish

crammed into tanks around Hong Kong. Too old and costly for the tastes of

most diners, some spend months or even years being gawped at by weekend

visitors with little prospect of ending up on a dinner plate any time soon.

 

One giant grouper measuring around 1.5 metres long was this particular

restaurant's prize draw for more than 12 months before it fell ill and died

in its tank around Lunar New Year.

 

" It was very, very old, " the waiter said. " After it died, we sliced it up

and served it in the restaurant. You wouldn't believe how much meat there

was on it. It's true that many people prefer to eat younger fish because

they think the taste is better, but some of our older customers do like to

eat these very big fish. They usually choose them to eat on special

occasions, and that is when some of the bigger fish you see here will go. "

 

This weekend, as Easter crowds pour into seafood hotspots, Hong Kong's taste

for exotic fish appears defiantly recession-proof. Falling fish stocks and

rising price have if anything, it seems, sharpened people's appetite.

 

However, the practice of enticing customers with the display of huge fish in

small tanks is troubling animal welfare experts, with Society for the

Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) executive director Sandy Macalister

likening it to the way caged leopards or shackled elephants were displayed

in the streets of colonial Hong Kong half a century ago.

 

Writing about the Sai Kung groupers in the SPCA's magazine Paw Prints, Mr

Macalister said: " These wonderful animals, which since the 1940s have lived

and bred in the coral depths, now lie behind thick distorting glass in a

narrow tank on the footpath. How many times have we walked past such

horrific living conditions for these animals without a second thought? Is it

because we consider them to be `just fish'? If a passer-by or a restaurant

patron knew that these magnificent creatures were more than 65 years old,

would that make a difference? "

 

Mr Macalister believes that Hong Kong's laws should be changed to stop big

fish being put on public display in cramped conditions by restaurants.

 

" They have sophisticated brains, and animal welfare science shows that they

are feeling things we never knew they felt, " he said. " Some of those fish

you see outside restaurants have probably been around since the 1940s. They

are used to swimming around freely in the depths. The next thing they know,

they are in a tank on a footpath in Sai Kung. It's cruel and it must be

terrifying for them. "

 

Mr Macalister said research suggested that despite common misconceptions,

fish had memories and feelings similar to other animals, meaning that being

kept for months or years in a restricted space amounted to a form of torture

for a mature, adult fish.

 

" The only thing with a fish is it can't express it, " he said. " People assume

that means they have nothing going on. But when you consider what a fish

does in its daily life - it can tell where it is, identify things and make

decisions - it is clear there's far more going on than anyone suspects. They

learn, and they have memories, and they can identify people. They feel

stress and they feel pain. People used to believe fish couldn't remember

anything for longer than three seconds, but we know now that isn't true. "

 

Mr Macalister said that as the law stood, it was very difficult to bring

prosecutions.

 

" The issue is defining what is too small in terms of a tank, " he said. " It's

similar to a dog being kept in a cage. If the fish has clean water and he

has got the space to move around, then it's not prosecutable under law.

Attitudes, as well as the law, have to change. It's an issue of education.

You can't blame people for not knowing, but there has to be a good look at

the law, taking into account what is now known with animal welfare science

and upgrading the law. "

 

Marine biologist Yvonne Sadovy, of the University of Hong Kong's school of

biological science, said the notion that fish felt pain and stress was

becoming increasingly accepted in academic circles.

 

" There has been a big question over whether fish feel pain and how they

respond, " she said. " Fish are vertebrates like us. They have a backbone, and

a lot of the biology and physiology have some similarities to us. The

nervous system and hormonal system in some ways are very similar. I think

most biologists would say there is absolutely no reason to believe they

would not feel pain. How they perceive it is obviously incredibly difficult

to know, but you pick up a fish and take it out of water and put a hook in

its mouth and it struggles. There is something clearly uncomfortable and not

right and that fish is perceiving stress in some way.

 

" There have been studies of fish in mariculture environments where stress

levels are measured by hormones when they are crowded and not fed properly,

and chemicals associated with stress are very high. So there is no reason to

think that they don't feel pain, In fact, that would have to be the

assumption, unless it can be shown that they do not. "

 

Professor Sadovy has examined how large fish are treated in Sai Kung and

said: " The way they are handled is pretty awful. They are there for the

spectacle and to attract people to the businesses. Sometimes, they will take

a big one out and slice it up in a very public way to draw attention to the

restaurant.

 

" What I see when I go and look at the tanks is that some of them are very

damaged on the front of their faces. They often have abrasions. I guess when

they are shipped and often moved over large areas, they get banged around. "

 

A worse and lingering fate sometimes awaits them in the tanks that sit

outside the seafood restaurants.

 

" I've actually seen these fish physically thrown from one net to another,

Professor Sadovy said. " People stand on the tanks and pick one up in a net

and throw it to another tank like a game of lacrosse.

 

" These fish have already been shipped over very long distances. They might

be picked up in the Solomon Islands and shipped for weeks. They are often

not fed for long periods of time so they are sometimes in pretty poor shape

when they get here. They come from an astonishing range of places, right

from the Maldives or the central Indian Ocean to the central Pacific and

Australia - they are coming from all of these places and, with the exception

of Australia, the fishing is not managed. "

 

Professor Sadovy draws a parallel with the way other animals used to be

treated before popular ideas changed. " We used to put lions and tigers in

tiny cages in the past, " she said. " With fish, we still don't treat them

like we do other animals that we have come to have more respect for. Fish

always get left until last. "

 

Existing animal cruelty laws do apply to fish, a spokeswoman for the

Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department confirmed. " All animals

in confinement, including fish, should be given enough space to move around

freely, " she said.

 

However, the wooliness of that definition appears to be a significant bar to

prosecutions. Asked if any cases had been brought to court, the spokeswoman

said: " There have been no prosecutions for keeping fish in cruel conditions

in the past three years. "

 

As far as Mr Macalister is concerned, a public debate and a review of the

law on the treatment of fish is urgently needed.

 

" We should start the discussion today, " he argues in his article. " Otherwise

will future generations wonder, `How could we have been so inhumane?' "

 

Painful conclusion

 

After years of debate, British scientists in 2003 said they finally had

proof that fish feel pain. The research found that fish have receptors in

their heads and that subjecting them to poisonous substances causes negative

" behavioural and physiological changes " . " This fulfils the criteria for

animal pain, " head researcher Dr Lynne Sneddon said. The trout injected with

a poison began to show a rocking motion - similarly seen in mammals and

those injected with another acid began rubbing their lips in the gravel of

their tank. The researchers said this showed the responses were not just

reflexes.

Staff Reporter