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Hunting is Murder on Animals |
| Part X -- Why fishing is Immoral |
Probably because of the different methods and equipment used, we have singled out the hunting of fish as different
from the hunting of every other sort of animal, and given it a different name: as if it were not hunting.
But from a moral viewpoint there is no difference.
In fact, the manner in which fish are usually handled involves more cruelty than is usually inflicted
on other hunted species.
In hunting fish, the goal is not so much the murder of the animals, as it is the torturing of the animal.
Think about it: hunters trick these animals into swallowing hooks, and then they drag them around by these hooks
until they are too weakened to resist. Following this ordeal, they either let them suffocate in slow agony
with their gills gasping for water-borne oxygen, or they throw them back: to die from their wounds.
Fish are the only animals -- other than ranch-raised minks -- that are regularly skinned alive.
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Releasing a fish, once caught, does not make the activity "humane". That's like saying that
torturing a person is okay, as long as you let him go afterwards so that he can be tortured again another day.
The humane thing to do would be to leave him alone in the first place.
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Those who advocate the "catch-and-release" method of fishing should try to imagine this:
You're walking along, minding your own business, when suddenly someone throws a grappling hook at you from an airplane
passing overhead.
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It hooks you under the chin, and with your feet digging into the ground, the plane drags you around for several miles
as you vainly struggle against it.
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Finally, when you are exhausted and have given up all hope of escaping, you are pulled up off the ground and hauled up into the airplane.
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There, two men are congratulating themselves on how big you are -- as if they had anything to do with it.
They remove the bloody hook; weigh you; fondle you; take pictures of themselves holding your dying, captive body; and
finally they turn to you and say: "Well, live to fight another day, Buddy..."
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and they throw you out of the plane.
Would you call that a "humane" experience?
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I guess it shouldn't surprise anyone that those who enjoy torturing fish in this manner
convince themselves that the fish enjoy the experience too. From the fisherman's viewpoint
he is "playing" the fish. But the tugs on the end of the line are not some friendly game of
tug-of-war: they are an animal's frantic struggle for life.
Just as land animals are purposely bred for hunters' guns, fish are purposely bred for those
who like to torture them. To take one extreme example: in Lake Ontario the lake is so heavily
polluted that fish cannot survive in the water for long. So fish are stocked every year in the hope
that the fish will survive long enough to attract fishermen to the area. The fish cannot be eaten
because they absorb the pollutants, and since the fish were placed there artificially no one
can claim to be preventing starvation. So why is all this done? Simply to keep the
fishermen happy and spending money.
If fish could vocalize their distress, their pain, and their anguish, doubtless many of the
fifty-nine million Americans who enjoy torturing them today would find other -- non-violent -- forms of recreation.
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