Why is fishing allowed?

What an idiotic comment vs cyclists who never leave energy bar wrappers, inner tubes etc lobbed into the undergrowth on trails?

Nowhere near as idiotic as trying to defend it by having a pop at an unrelated activity.

Fish are evil bastards. If people didn’t keep them under control they would grow legs and take over the world, raping and pillaging as they go. Mark my words.

I kill  over 800 kg of fish,all predators,each working day ,but wouldn’t go angling for entertainment.

Haven’t eaten a herbivore for 6 years .

Orcas, and Dolphins are grade-A c***s. They’re among the select few animals on the planet that will hunt for sport, including each other.

Chimpanzees are nasty brutes too.

Crikey if you’re upset about fish wait till you find out we hunt poor people for sport.

is there a venn diagram between this thread, and the one where everyone loves whitehouse and mortimer?

@lunge

For some reason, my Insta feed has started throwing up some fishing, specifically sea fishing content and it had me thinking.

the bigger question is why is your insta, “feeding” you this, but its not doing the same to everyone else here?  Essentially you are being manipulated, for better or worse, by an algorithm created by Meta to make them money!  My guess is there are two types of people pushing this content on the web – the “fishing industry suppliers (equipment sales, boat charter, engine sales, lures etc)” and the “animal welfare lobby”.   Whichever one is promoting to you, is doing so because you’ve given the impression you might be interested from other stuff you look at and so can be persuaded to interact with their post.  Either its worked (it manipulated you to make this thread) or its backfired slightly (although probably someone reading this thinks – actually I should dust off my old rod, I used to enjoy that).

Fishing is a very broad church from trawlers dragging across the seabed, or sweeping up loads of unsellable bi-catch, to farmed fish living in “in humane” conditions, big game fishing (what you were probably describing), sea angling, river (coarse) fishing, fly fishing etc, spearfishing and hand diving for scallops/clams etc.  With as many different techniques (each with their own horrors or not).  What you described, live bait, dealing a fish in over a long time, leaving fish on deck to suffocate, etc is only one niche of fishing.

The one possible overlap between cyclists and fishing that might have “contaminated” your feed for no obvious reason is that Shimano are big in both fishing and cycling.

But fish don’t have the higher functioning parts of a brain that can asses negative association with that stimulus or an emotional response to it, or translate sensations from stimulated nerves into ‘a thing’

No, I’m sure you’re right. The difference between nerve reaction and brain response. I doubt there’s a sense of dread linked to pain like a human or a dog can learn (I say doubt as don’t know about biology to say either way).

If you subjected a fish to threat or environmental stress over a long period it’d have some negative effects, so I’d also expect injury or threat to register and have an effect at some level. Is the effect purely a reaction or is there more to it in the animals experience? If animals seek food and shelter and a form of comfort (temps, environment) then I’d think that’s a form of registering positive vs negative, however instinctive it is, and what we’re talking about as ‘pain’ here is a negative state, something that goes against survival instincts. The Q is about our definition/perception of pain vs a perhaps ‘instinctive stress’ in a simpler animal brain and how simple a fish brain is compared to a dog or bear. I’m inclined to think that ‘pain’ would be there as well as some amount of learning/habit because without them we’re saying that a simpler animal is no different to an AI program with the need to eat and reproduce. Maybe they’re not, on a purely biological level.

It’s got me thinking anyway. Maybe I’m mixing this with a more buddhist ‘do no harm’ way of thinking that is just about respecting life generally. And since I eat meat and fish from shops* .. I’m in no place to say whether people should go fishing or not.

*far less these days, partly because of all this and awareness of what larger-scale farming and fishing can involve.

If you have no memory afterwards

I’m sure I read somewhere that the long-established idea that goldfish have a memory of several seconds is a complete myth.

is there a venn diagram between this thread, and the one where everyone loves whitehouse and mortimer?

There’s certainly a crossover between this one and threads about stuff like dogs. Fairly sensible discussion on the whole from both sides of the debate, interspersed with the occasional massively defensive tirade bookended with “and I’m a dog owner and…” well no shit, we didn’t see that plot twist coming at all.

If after all these millions of years of evolution, fish haven’t got the brains to learn how to look cute and fwuffy then frankly they deserve everything they get

The fish wouldn’t take part if they didn’t enjoy it.

I have no idea if this has been covered or not, but, as an ex-fisherman, and in my anecdotal experience, I think fish do have memories. I used to fish as much as I could (multiple times a week) and had a great knowledge of my favourite spots. Some of these were well-fished carp lakes and you had to be pretty clever to catch the fish as they seemed to know when there was something suspicious. I also fished a private carp lake that was only very lightly fished and it was much, much easier – the fish didn’t have the same level of suspicion and would just grab at any bait.

Likewise, I also used to fish off a bridge to catch chub and dace. If I threw a few maggots in along with my baited hook, you could watch all the fish rising to feed off the maggots, but the baited hook was not always taken.

So, in my experience, I think they can associate certain things with pain and discomfort and can learn to avoid.

Ultimately it is why I gave it up but there is still a small part of me that would like to take it back up when my kids have grown up, left home and I have retired.

If you jump on YouTube you can likely find footage of chimpanzees masturbating using a frog.

Bloody hell Cougar, your You Tube history must make for some reading 😮

Chimpanzees are nasty brutes too.

I once had to spec a chimpanzee proof enclosure for a natural history doc.

The guidance we go from the zoo was if they can’t dismantle it, they will try and destroy it. And that coupled with phenomenal grip strength meant they couldn’t have any external nuts / bolts, and all the (bulletproof) glass needed to be replaceable from the inside as it was likely they’d just throw rocks at it. Fascinating animals though, you can see how they’re only a spark of intelligence away from human.

Bloody hell Cougar, your You Tube history must make for some reading 😮

I did say “likely.” I believe it exists. I have not watched it, nor do I care to.

Any deviant proclivities I may or may not have would tend towards mucky women rather than mucky simians.

you can see how they’re only a spark of intelligence away from human.

The same is true of plenty of humans.

if they can’t dismantle it, they will try and destroy it. And that coupled with phenomenal grip strength meant they couldn’t have any external nuts / bolts, and all the (bulletproof) glass needed to be replaceable from the inside as it was likely they’d just throw rocks at it.

To be fair to the chimps, that sounds like quite a few of my mates

I used to have guppies in a tank. The females would give birth and then go ‘ooh, a snack’ and eat their own babies. So they aren’t exactly higher animals. At least, not those ones.