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Comment by lend000 | Hacker News Reader

Just fishing in general is probably the most horrible form of hunting (imagine fighting for your life against a sharp hook caught in your mouth until you give in to pain and exhaustion and then die of asphyxiation and/or being beat and dehydrated).

Which is at least quite brief compared to factory farming, as a sibling commenter mentioned. I think the reason shark fins get so much attention in the English speaking world is because most of us don't consume shark fins, so there's nothing for us to give up to decry an otherwise unspectacular act of cruelty.

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I’ve done some commercial fishing for bluefin which are overnighted to Japan. The dock brokers measure the lactic acid in the meat and price accordingly. To get the max rate, you have to use the heaviest tackle to get the fish in quickly. Then you push a steel rod through the brain, and cut the tail and run a wire leader up the center of the spine. While these rules are mainly about preserving flavor, I have adopted them for recreational fishing. Throwing a live fish in a cooler is simple, but the Japanese technique is gross but more humane.

I remember hearing that tuna can actually heat up so much during a struggle that they begin to cook themselves and it's frowned upon, so I would assume a slower fight would be better. I do remember a short documentary on the subject where a Japanese tuna buyer was at a broker and was pretty skeptical of American fisherman and pointed out things they had done that a Japanese fisherman wouldn't. My experience is only from catching small game fish in the Gulf of Mexico, but I can agree that fishing is a brutal pastime in some ways, but also fish are not particularly sympathetic animals.

Does the fish struggle with less might if it's being brought in more slowly? My naive guess is that it doesn't struggle appreciably less if being reeled in 25% more slowly. In that case, minimizing temperature is primarily a matter of minimizing the struggle time.

The faster you get a fish to the boat, the more likely they are to survive when you release them. With strong enough line the fish can't turn away and so is just dragged in without expending much energy. It will thrash side to side a bit, but it can't do long exhausting sprints away from the boat. When fishing for tuna, recreational fishermen will use 100lb mono because people enjoy fighting the fish and the fish aren't released. Commercial fishing uses 500lb dyneema line, and in my experience you release 3 fish per kill due to size limits. You just crank them to the boat and if they are too small they will swim away like they never missed a beat.

There are plenty of fly fisherman who would disagree. Most fly fisherman have pushed for protected waters, and protected them by minimizing damaging the fish, with the removal of the hook's barb. Most fly fisherman that I know will not even take the fish out of water to release the fish.

The most horrible form of hunting id have to say is trapping as its much slower in a sense but similar to fishing.

Fishing comes in various forms obviously and I totally think finning is horrible but as they say, "nature is metal".

As a fly fisherman I have to agree. Most fly fishermen put a lot of effort into saving fish. The general rule is to use barbless hooks and to never remove the fish from the water and to handle it with gloves to improve its chance of survival.

But I will admit that most fly fisherman do not keep their catch. The vast majority is catch-and-release, which receives very open criticism. But in order to protect the sport, most fly fishermen go to extreme efforts to protect the species.

Likewise most hunters actually go to extreme measures to protect environments they hunt in. And hunting tags and fees are the largest source of funding for environmental restoration programs. Hunters also commonly contribute to conservation programs. A few bad hunters that make the news tend to spoil this reputation. But if you enjoy the outdoors, hiking, and other similar sports it is thanks to hunters that a lot of those programs are funded and continue to exist.

In both these cases, The humanity of the animals and the protections of their species and environments are encouraged strongly throughout the community.

Shark finning is very much the opposite. No care is provided to the humanity of the animals. An equivilant western version of shark finning would be hunting a bear or wolf (a protected diminishing species), then cutting its liver out while its alive, and then leaving it helpless in the woods to die slowly over the course of the next few hours or half a day.

While I understand everyone's argument that ethnocentrism over eastern beliefs prevent us from understanding this practice. But there is a line that needs to be drawn between the humanity of an animal and the conservation of its species. Neither of these factors are being considered in Shark finning. If they want to eat shark fins, I don't inheritely have a problem with that. But programs should exist to propagate the shark species. Also the animal should simply be killed before harvesting. If those conditions were met, I don't think the practice would receive anywhere near the scrutiny that it does today.

The looming question- what if pointless cruelty and prolonged suffering is an important part of the culture? What then?

I’ve never been convinced we can reconcile relativism with humanity.

Why is culture important? Is that value greater than the suffering?

It's important, because if you want them to change, you need to understand why they preform an action to begin with. The alternative is an ignorant attempt to tell them what is right and wrong based on only your beliefs.

> The looming question- what if pointless cruelty and prolonged suffering is an important part of the culture? What then?

Then it would be irresponsible for the US congress to be spending public money to buy tools which create the expectation that we would sustain our effort sending our beloved sons to immerse themselves both in that culture and the cruel trauma of war.

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But does anyone here actually think that pointless cruelty is an important part of the relevant east asian cultures? I know myself that my understanding is so superficial that I'd be arrogant and lazy to make any judgements without spending far more time and attention to learn. I also have not seen any evidence of that in the individual people I've met, only the same varied mix of human cruelty and compassion in other peoples.

Would you want to be fly fished?

>>The vast majority is catch-and-release

Only if you're fishing for wild trout, which is the minority in the UK. Most fly fishing is stocked fish in still waters and your ticket normally has a limit on how many trout you can take (typically 5 in a day), and once you hit that limit you stop fishing.

I find fishing barbaric, and I spent a lot of time fishing as a kid. Fly fishing is definitely more humane than a lot of other types of fishing, but ultimately you’re hurting a fish for pleasure. That’s basically a form of sadism. Of course, most don’t take pleasure in the fish’s pain, but the suffering of the fish is an essential part of the sport. You can’t catch a fish without it suffering. And ultimately, most just take a picture and throw the fish back. These days, I’d rather go for a hike along the river.

> imagine fighting for your life against a sharp hook caught in your mouth until you give in to pain and exhaustion and then die of asphyxiation and/or being beat and dehydrated

Maybe I’m not a very compassionate person but its hard to appreciate if fish really are significantly beyond primitive levels of cognition (with obvious exceptions for dolphins, whales, and to a lesser extent sharks).

Most of them would never think twice about murdering thousands to propagate their own species. Such is the fundamental nature of life we all were born into.

The fact it’s an asphyxiation over ice over an hour vs being eaten alive in nature isn’t much of a big difference.

But maybe like lobsters there’s a middle ground? The shark fin thing is clear bad idea but calling out fishing in general probably won’t win you many supporters.

I'm trying to find words, but it is a bit weird seeing people being so compassionate about an apex predator.

I'd lead instead with the fact that fishing is largely an ecological disaster.

It is like the argument against eating meat based entirely on killing being bad, but we can see that killing happens all over the place in nature. However, the problem is that we've gotten way too good at killing and need to practice a lot more restraint.

> I'm trying to find words, but it is a bit weird seeing people being so compassionate about an apex predator.

Humans are the most apex of apex predators... I hope that doesn't disqualify us from deserving compassion.

Yeah, that would be why words are nearly impossible in these kinds of subjects.

> hard to see anything significantly beyond reptile-brain

But fish clearly experience pain and possibly fear:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_fish

“Dr Lynne Sneddon, with her colleagues, Braithwaite, and Gentle, were the first to discover nociceptors (pain receptors) in fish. She stated that fish demonstrate pain-related changes in physiology and behaviour, that are reduced by painkillers, and they show higher brain activity when painfully stimulated.

Professor Victoria Braithwaite, in her book, Do Fish Feel Pain?, wrote that, fish, like birds and mammals, have a capacity for self-awareness, and can feel pain.”

Donald Broom, Professor of Animal Welfare, Cambridge University, England, said that most mammalian pain systems are also found in fish, who can feel fear and have emotions which are controlled in the fish brain in areas anatomically different but functionally very similar to those in mammals.

> Most of them would never think twice about murdering thousands to propagate their own species. Such is the fundamental nature of life we all were born into

But if part of your reasoning for not extending compassion/humane treatment to another creature is based on the degree to which it appears to extend compassion/humane treatment to other creatures... that would seem to imply we should extend less compassion to you vs. humans who extend more compassion to these same creatures, right?

I'm not suggesting that we treat you worse than other people, but rather suggest that this line of reasoning might need to be reconsidered.

That is, your rule seems to put you at a disadvantage if applied universally. Am I missing something?

It's against my base instincts, but the older I get, the more I try to extend compassion unconditionally. Among other things, I find it just makes me a calmer person. YMMV.

> It's against my base instincts

Why is this against your base instincts? It’s quite the opposite for me so I’m curious how that developed in you.

I'm naturally less compassionate towards mean/cruel/"evil" people, or to be honest, people I just dislike for less reasonable reasons. It takes mental effort for me to attempt to feel as much compassion for all people equally.

I always wonder if aliens would think the same about humans -> primitive level of cognition. Just because a living thing is so different then we are means just nothing, and mark them as "primitive cognition" only shows our own lack of cognition, examples for completely misunderstood animals (in the past) are Wales and Sharks...and wonder wonder they life in a total different world then we are.

Even the most primitive levels of cognition lead animals to feel fear and fight for their lives. That's one of the first things cognition did.

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