FISHING :No Less Cruel

Many people don't eat land animals and birds, not even eggs but are okay with eating fish. They justify this saying that fish aren’t raised in the cruel confinement of factory farms; fishing doesn’t require trees to be cleared for pasture lands or to grow feed crops or require huge amounts of pesticides and irrigation water ; fish don't scream, so they might not be feeling pain. All of these arguments are specious.

Fish does feel pain

1. Imagine someone forcibly keeps your head dip in a pool of water and you're gasping for air but all in vain. How suffocating and frightening it would be! The restlessness, panic, pain and struggle for life that you would feel is the same what fishes feel when they're out of water. Almost, every commercially-caught fish dies a slow and painful death from suffocation when it is pulled out of water and  kept tossed on the ice or rock. Fish caught in deep waters have it even worse: as they are pulled to the surface, depressurization can cause their organs to burst, or their stomachs to protrude from their mouths.

2. Sometimes we hear or see the news of a person accidentally been impaled by a metal rod or something. How painful it is even to hear that! So, definitely it wouldn't be a pleasure for the fish to be impaled on a fisherman's hook and be pulled out of the water.The hooks often pierced in the face, or even in the eyes of fish would cut its mouth open.

Researches prove that fish does feel pain.

Fish also have the tendency to move away from the pain-causing agent and this behavior is cognitive and not just reflexive. Fish don’t audibly scream when they’re impaled on hooks or grimace when the hooks are ripped from their mouths, but their behavior offers evidence of their suffering—if we’re willing to look. For example, when a biologist Braithwaite and her colleagues exposed fish to irritating chemicals, they lost their appetite, their gills beat faster, and they rubbed the affected areas against the side of the tank.
Fish, like “higher vertebrates,” have neurotransmitters such as endorphins that relieve suffering—the only reason for their nervous systems to produce these painkillers is to alleviate pain. Researchers have created a detailed map of more than 20 pain receptors, or nociceptors.

Eating fish isn’t healthy as you think

·       Industrial and municipal wastes and the agricultural chemicals flushed into the world’s waters are absorbed by the fish and get bioaccumulated in their bodies.

·       Fish can accumulate high levels of mercury and carcinogens like PCBs.(Polychlorinated Biphenyl). Fish is the main source of methyl mercury a substance that has been linked to cardiovascular disease, fetal brain damage, blindness, deafness, and problems with motor skills, language, and attention span. In USA, Seafood is also the number one cause of food poisoning.

Fish ‘Farming’ does exist and it’s cruel

·       Fish “farming” involves large-scale, highly mechanized production of fish Thousands of fish are crammed into ponds, troughs, or sea-floating cages, so that fish farmers can raise the greatest possible number of fish per cubic foot of water. In most cases, each fish is allotted a space scarcely larger than their body.

·       Farmed fish are fed pellets designed for unnaturally rapid weight gain. Under these abnormal intensely crowded conditions, fish suffer from stress, infections, parasites, oxygen depletion, and gas bubble disease.

·        In an effort to prevent the spread of disease among the fish, producers give them large amounts of antibiotics. Even so, many fish die before slaughter.

·       For economic reasons and to reduce fish feces, most farmed fish are starved for days or weeks before they are slaughtered.

·       Farmed” fish also are fed dyes to give their flesh a pink color, as well as massive amounts of antibiotics to stave off bacterial diseases and sea lice.

·       Ever heard of a cruel practice called Eyestalk ablation ?  Female prawns have their eye sliced open or cut off — usually without pain relief — to make them reproduce faster. It is routinely practiced on female shrimps (or prawns) in almost every marine shrimp maturation or reproduction facility in the world. Female prawns have a gland behind their eyes which tells their ovaries when to mature. In the wild this could be influenced by things like breeding season or environmental factors but prawn farmers have found that the stressful and crowded conditions on farms can make prawns reluctant to reproduce.By destroying this gland, farmers rapidly force ovary growth, denying female prawns the natural instinct to only reproduce when the conditions are right

Fishing destroys Environment.

Lets start by a ubiquitous term in fishing industry called "Bycatch". Modern fishing gear, often undetectable by sight and extremely strong, is very efficient at catching the desired fish species—as well as anything else in its path. So, it's not only the target fishes that get caught up in the fish gear or net but also huge amount of other marine lives—including turtles, dolphins and juvenile fish—Such 'unwanted' lives are then discarded overboard dead or dying. Now Some alarming figures :

·       About 40% of fish catch worldwide is unintentionally caught and is partly thrown back into the sea, either dead or dying.

·       It is estimated that over 300,000 small whales, dolphins, and porpoises die from entanglement in fishing nets each year, making this the single largest cause of mortality for small cetaceans.

Very often fishing gears or nets are lost or abandoned in the ocean. They are called 'Ghost net or Ghost gear'.Ghost nets don’t only catch fish; they also entangle sea turtles, dolphins and porpoises, birds, sharks, seals, and more. These nets continue to trap everything in their path, presenting a major problem for the health of our oceans and marine life.

·       A staggering 640,000 tonnes of ghost gear is left in our oceans each year – more than one tonne every minute

·        Every year more than 100,000 whales, dolphins, seals and turtles get caught in abandoned or lost fishing nets, lines and traps. Made of durable material, this ghost gear can take up to 600 years to break down. Some nets are bigger than football pitches.

·       Fish nets are major contributor to more than 8 million tonnes of plastic leaks into the ocean each year – equal to dumping a garbage truck of plastic every minute.

·       Bottom-trawling and dredging destroys the fragile sea floor and coral reefs which are extremely important for the ecosystem.

·       The farming of marine fish, crustaceans and even bivalves produces waste in the form of fecal matter and unused feed. These largely nitrogen-based wastes can cause oxygen depletion in coastal environments and a net loss of marine productivity in certain coastal areas. Additionally, the use of antibiotics, antifoulants, and pesticides are all problems that aquaculture can introduce into the marine environment.

·       Some fishing techniques cause habitat destruction. Blast fishing and cyanide fishing, which are illegal in many places, harm surrounding habitat.Blast fishing refers to the practice of using explosives to capture fish. Cyanide fishing refers to the practice of using cyanide to stun fish for collection. These two practices are commonly used for the aquarium trade and the live fish food trade.

So, next time, if a poker-faced fish ,unable to scream or show apparent signs of pain , falls short of arousing your compassion but waters your mouth, you can still skip eating it for the sake of your health and environment.