Fishing: The catch is this sport could well be cruel

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The catch is this sport could well be cruel

 

Bidda Jones

September 16, 2008

 

When I was 11, I caught my first fish. It turned out to be my last

one, too. After a short wait, a small, flapping, brownish, shiny fish

was dangling at the end of my handline, and became my responsibility.

It was my job to do the killing. I can't remember what I hit the fish

with, but after 10 or so blows to what I hoped was its head (I had my

eyes shut), it was still flapping around in the boat. I remember its

mouth gaping and shutting as it struggled to stay alive. My father

finally killed it, and cooked it for dinner.

These days I spend my working life telling other people how they

should treat animals. And that, at least for me, includes fish.

Despite knowing a lot about fish, we still argue about their capacity

to feel pain. While we have an increased capacity to empathise with

other animals that sound and behave like us, the big problem with

fish is that they're just too different.

And because of that we don't really worry about what we do to them.

In parts of Australia, until very recently, fish didn't count when it

came to animal welfare legislation - the legal definition of an

animal excluded them.

(There are still some weird anomalies, such as in the Northern

Territory where you can be prosecuted for being cruel to a fish

living in captivity, but not if it's in the wild.)

Angling is one of the most popular recreational pastimes in

Australia, the United States, Britain and a lot of other places. It's

everywhere; it is totally establishment. At least 5 million

Australians are involved, which is why the debate over whether fish

feel pain makes people nervous. Really nervous.

Proving fish don't feel pain, at least in the way humans feel pain,

seems to have become a personal mission for one American academic,

James Rose, a professor in the Department of Zoology and Physiology

at the University of Wyoming, Laramie. Rose is doing his scientific

best to make sure no fuzzy-minded, tree-hugging animal lover stands

between the men in waders and their potential catch.

Rose argues that because fish don't have an adequately developed

forebrain neocortex (the bit that does all the clever stuff), they

are incapable of consciousness, and therefore cannot feel pain.

But while the neocortex is important in shaping the degree of

consciousness of an animal, we don't really know where in the animal

kingdom we can draw the line between species that do or don't

experience consciousness. Nor do we yet fully understand what

consciousness is.

For example, recent studies of patients diagnosed as being in a

persistent vegetative states have found that in some cases their

brains respond in a similar way to those of a conscious person.

Conversely, Rose uses the case of Terri Schiavo, who was diagnosed in

1990 as being in a persistent vegetative state. Schiavo's parents

claimed her movements and reaction to noxious stimuli were evidence

she was still conscious.

The neurologists said she was unconscious, her reactions were

reflexive and her condition irreversible. Following her death in

2005, the neurologists' diagnosis was confirmed by autopsy. Rose's

point is that we should not be misled by what we observe: what

animals do means nothing in itself, since their actions may be in

response to a reflex over which they have no conscious control. The

converse, though, is that we should not be misled by what we can't

observe.

Rose accepts fish have nocioceptors, receptors which respond to

painful stimuli and which are similar in structure to our own. But,

says Rose, having nocioceptors isn't enough to join the pain club,

because the reflex is common to most animals and does not require a

complex nervous system. To be a fully fledged member you must

experience or feel pain, and to do that you need consciousness.

In contrast, Lynne Sneddon, from the Roslin Institute in Scotland,

and her colleagues, found that after rainbow trout had acetic acid or

bee venom injected into their lips, they increased their breathing

rate, were slower to feed, rocked from side to side and rubbed their

lips on the tank floor and walls.

Where does that leave the big fish debate? The no-pain believers say

until we prove that fish have consciousness, we cannot say they can

feel pain.

The opposing camp says because fish demonstrate behaviour indicative

of experiencing pain, we should assume they do. We don't know what

fish feel, but if they lose their appetite and act like they've got a

sore mouth after being jabbed in the lips with bee venom, that's good

enough for me. It hurts - somehow.

 

Bidda Jones is chief scientist of RSPCA Australia. This is an edited

extract from her chapter in The Finlay Lloyd Book About ANIMALS, to

be published on October 4.

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