Verboten!! Thoughts on ethics and fishing...

As it turns out, if you show up in an internet fishing discussion forum and suggest that fishing, per se, might raise some challenging ethical questions, you may very well find yourself in the minority position. Through no fault of my own, I am now banned from chat boards in 32 states and 7 foreign countries.  This is my story.

Some time ago, on a forum I no longer frequent the Finnish Sword Spirit posed an interesting question: why do we harm what we profess to so love? Of course, this question presupposes two things: first, that we love fish, and second, that what we do harms them.  I take it as a given that the former is true.  Does fishing harm fish? We know, without a doubt, that the fish we eat are killed, and we also know, without a doubt, that some of the fish we catch, and then release, also die. But of course, the carrots we eat also die – the issue, then, is whether the fish we catch actually suffer.

Although in some ways, this is the most important question, the real purpose of this post isn’t to answer that question, for two reasons.  First, this is actually a very complicated question that requires not only a careful definition of “suffer” but also that we decide if such a definition applies only to sentient beings- and this, in turn, requires that we first define “sentient being” and then determine whether fish are, in fact, sentient. For these reasons, determining whether fish feel pain and suffer for it is (in my opinion) largely under the purview of neurologists (And, it seems, still a fairly controversial subject in the field of neurobiology.) Second, if fish do not suffer, then this particular discussion is about as interesting as asking whether it is ethical to eat donuts.  So I’m interested in discussing whether fishing raising ethical questions because this, itself, is an interesting question.  Interesting is always better than uninteresting.  I also admit – no, proudly declare – that my thoughts on this subject are a work in progress. If your thinking isn’t a work in progress, then you’re functionally brain-dead, or at least brain-stagnant.  And that’s just not culvert.

So, we’re going to explore this problem under the assumption that fish do feel pain, and can at least experience something akin to “suffering”, though what and how much that might be we won’t specify right now.  When these discussions came up on-line, I was surprised at some of the vitriol I experienced when I suggested we might want to think about this.  This vitriol was, in my opinion, misguided for the following reasons. If we (i.e. fishermen) justify the ethical permissibility of fishing on the premise that fish cannot suffer, then we will be forced to accept that fishing is ethically impermissible if, at some point, scientists determine beyond any reasonable doubt that fish do indeed suffer.  If, instead, we can identify a justification for fishing that does not rely on the premise that fish do not feel pain, it won’t matter what scientists later discover.

There is an additional reason, also self-serving, why we should think about this topic. We will never convince an ardent opponent of fishing to go fishing or even that fishing is ethical. However, there is a large proportion of the population that does not fish, but is not – yet – opposed to the idea that those of us who wish to fish should be allowed to do so legally.  When these people see the “slob fisherman”, who leaves his empty beer cans along the river, tosses fish onto the bank to slowly suffocate, and treats with utter disdain those who might even wonder if fishing presents some ethical challenges, these fence-sitters move a little more in one direction.  When they see that fisherman are instead capable of thinking about, and even concerned about, the welfare of the fish they catch, then the fence-sitters move a little bit in the other direction.  Why should you care?  Because fence-sitters, by virtue of their numbers, have influence.

And, I have to get one more thing off my chest.  I’m not going to try to determine here whether fish do or do not feel pain or suffer.  But I have to address some of the arguments that I regularly see offered as proof of either the former or the latter. Perhaps more than anything else, I see the following: “If fish felt pain, they would not eat sharp things. Yet fish do eat sharp things; therefore, fish do not feel pain.” This argument is internally valid, but is based on a false premise.  The idea that fish would not eat sharp things if they felt pain is simply ludicrous. Natural selection favors traits, including behaviors, whose benefits, on average, outweigh the costs – and all traits have both benefits and costs.  Animals of all kinds do things that cause them pain precisely because the benefits outweigh the costs. The examples are countless, but consider the many male mammals (which we all reasonably infer feel pain) that will fight with rival males, often becoming mortally wounded in the process, for the chance to mate with females. Why in the world would males fight like this if they felt pain?  To get laid! Because any male who was unwilling to do so would not produce male offspring who, in turn, were also willing to do so.

One also regularly sees the argument that fish must not feel pain, because otherwise they would not fight against the angler.  The idea here is that by resisting, they would increase the pain inflicted by the hook.  Assuming that no animal would do anything that increases pain, it must follow, then, that fish do not feel pain. Of course, the assumption is bogus (particularly when one considers the fish’s options, as the fish must "see" it: resist and possibly live, or come in calmly and be killed). Interestingly, the same observation – that fish resist being captured – is also offered as evidence that they do feel pain or suffer. Unfortunately, the fact that fish, or any organism, can respond in a way as to avoid or mitigate damage is not evidence, one way or the other, on the pain and suffering question. Plants can detect damage from herbivores and respond by sending defensive chemicals to the site of damage.  Many single-celled aquatic organisms will respond to potential threats by swimming away.  These – and other “damage mitigating” traits – not only do not require a sense of pain, they don’t even require a nervous system or consciousness. Neurobiologists who study fish still do not agree on whether fish suffer, not because they disagree on what fish do when hooked, but because they disagree on how a fish’s brain processes the event.

But for the sake of this discussion, for reasons outlined above, we’re going to assume that fish do feel pain and suffer, at least to some degree. From here, I’m going to take what we might call a more-or-less utilitarian ethics perspective (as opposed to, say, a deontological one).  This is basically the idea that what is right is that which maximizes good and minimizes harm. Although some would disagree that a utilitarian approach ever justifies causing animals harm, most people probably fall somewhere else on the spectrum. For example, many people argue that some kind of research on animals is justified, provided that the benefits from that research (say, for example, towards curing diseases that cause great suffering) are sufficient. This argument usually assumes that, at a minimum, humans are justified in causing some animal suffering if the alternative is death, or perhaps also horrible human suffering.

Things that are necessary for us to live we could call “essential human benefits”.  All else we might call “non-essential human benefits”.   The problem gets complex, and therefore interesting, once it is no longer human life that is at stake but instead something that we might say “ranks lower” than simply sustaining a human life, i.e. those “non-essential human benefits.”  Let’s ignore, for the moment, that there might be some disagreement over what is or is not “essential”, or over whether something might be called a “benefit” or not.  Let’s just lump all those things that some humans do to improve the quality of their lives into this category (even if you, yourself, don’t necessarily do it).  What might some of these be, that include the use of animals and cause, perhaps, suffering?  Animal research that is not directly related to saving human lives, hamburgers, bullfights, hunting and fishing (among all but those who must live where agriculture - and relocating - is not an option) probably all qualify as non-essential human benefits that result in some degree of animal suffering. Anything else?  More on this shortly.

Arguments against these and similar activities posit that the suffering these activities cause does not justify them because they are non-essential, and because the suffering they cause is not (or may not be) trivial.  Much of the debate around the use of animals concerns the use of animals for food, because humans do need to eat after all; so, the question becomes whether eating meat is essential, and if not, can it be justified? For most people, eating meat is not essential; this is incontrovertible, I think. The obvious alternative, then, is to eat plants. But is it? Some thought-provoking debates in the field of environmental/animal ethics have recently addressed whether, from a utilitarian approach, eating plants always causes less harm than eating animals.  If strict utilitarianism is the standard by which we assign ethical permissibility, and it can be shown that some forms of meat consumption cause less suffering, overall, than practices associated with plant consumption, then it must be concluded that this form of meat consumption is more ethically permissible than being a vegetarian.  This is precisely the argument that Steven Davis puts forth in a paper that received not just considerable attention in the scholarly literature, but even in the popular press. One key point in Davis’s argument is that agricultural practices, i.e. the growing of plants for food, inevitably harm and kill animals – but he goes further.  Citing the very few studies that have actually tried to quantify the number of vertebrates killed by agriculture, Davis argues that some (but not all) meat-based diets actually result in fewer animal deaths, per year, than a strictly vegetarian diet. (Davis focuses on vertebrates, particularly birds and small mammals, because most of the meat we eat comes from vertebrates, and because it is not clear at all whether insects – which are surely killed by the billions by agriculture – can actually suffer.) His study was subsequently criticized on a number of grounds, in particular that some of the calculations were wrong – and from the utilitarian (i.e. “least harm”) perspective, this matters.  I’ll let somebody else do the research.  But the idea itself is thought provoking, to me, and has some bearing (though perhaps tangential) to my recent thoughts on fishing and ethics.

One of the arguments fishermen often make to justify fishing is that, among other things, they get to interact with nature. For many opposed to fishing, this is insufficient grounds for causing fish to suffer for a number of reasons, one of which is the argument that one can “get out into nature” without actually fishing.  This argument assumes that a fisherman can get that connection to nature whether he or she is fishing or not.  Most fishermen, I contend, would not agree with that, even if they cannot explain exactly why.  I certainly fall into that category.  It strikes me as very similar, in some ways, to what making music does for some musicians and what painting does for some artists.  That is, although they cannot (perhaps) describe the effect it has on them, it is real and important.  And most importantly, it cannot be replaced by another activity, just because somebody else cannot understand why it cannot.  Should the violinist suddenly find himself without a violin, he is probably not going to be satisfied by the suggestion that he “just take up painting”.  This is an important point, to which I'll return shortly, because it has bearing on one of the criticisms of fishing: that fishing causes suffering in fish for nothing more than the "fun" that the fisherman gains. I think many of us, i.e. fishermen, would agree that "fun" doesn't quite capture it.  Again - more on this shortly.

The question I keep returning to is “What are we entitled to, beyond mere existence, and where does that “thing” that we get from fishing fall, relative to other non-essential human benefits?” Reflecting back on the arguments of Davis, even if one accepts the criticisms of his calculations, it’s probably incontrovertible that modern agricultural practices harm a shit-ton of animals.  Now, you might be right in arguing that this still harms fewer animals than if we were to eat them, but the consequences of all of the death and destruction of modern agriculture go beyond simply providing us with necessary calories and nutrients.  It provides us with a relatively cheap and varied selection of veggies.  And these attributes, I argue, are in fact “non-essential human benefits.”  That is, while we do need to eat, it is far from essential that we have access to produce that is as inexpensive and varied as it is. Lentils everyday, anyone? When cheap vegetables, and all of the other things that we (as in “first-world inhabitants”) enjoy as non-essential benefits – and, it would seem to me, this includes a whole lot of stuff…stuff that nobody I know does entirely without – are considered in this light, things get more complicated.   So far I’ve been unable to come up with a positive justification for fishing (by which I mean, a justification that argues that my going fishing causes me more pleasure than the equivalent suffering it causes to the fish – provided that we assume the fish do, in fact, suffer.) But I’m also unable to convince myself that my fishing is, in fact, more harmful than what many people are doing when they take advantage of (often unknowingly, or without any thought to) these various non-essential benefits. And I think this gets back to the issue of whether fishing is simply something we do "for fun" - and if there is more to it than that, which I think is so, how does one evaluate it relative to the many things we humans do merely "for convenience"? Here, of course, I'm referring to my earlier points about inexpensive and varied produce selections, and the like. My gut wants to say, in response to the argument that if I were to cease fishing, the world would be spared of some suffering: “You go first.”

Finally, the “least harm principle” suggests that there is a currency (i.e. harm, or the avoidance of harm), and this brings up another question: Can one “cap and trade” oneself to a more (but probably not perfectly) ethical life?  In other words, if I don’t eat a cheap and well-balanced meal on Friday (and instead opt for the more expensive and certainly less interesting, but also less-harmful “Lentil Surprise”), can I go fishing on Saturday?

- T.J.  Brayshaw

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For those interested in wading a bit deeper into the literature surrounding these debates, here are some starting points...


The article by De Leeuw is one of the more widely cited philosophical papers arguing against "sport" fishing. De Leeuw argues that fishing is an act of cruelty.  It's a thought provoking read, as is Olsen's very good critique of De Leeuw's paper.

De Leeuw, A. Dionys (1996) Contemplating the interests of fish: the angler’s challenge. Environmental Ethics 18:373-390.

Olesen, Len (2003) Contemplating the intentions of anglers: the ethicist’s challenge. Environmental Ethics 25:267-277.

The paper by Davis that I mentioned in the post is listed below, along with two follow-up papers that challenged some of Davis's assumptions and conclusions:

Davis, Steven (2003) The least harm principle may require that humans consume a diet containing large herbivores, not a vegan diet. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 16:387-394 (2003).

Matheny, Gaverick (2003) Least harm: a defense of vegetarianism from Steven Davis’s omnivorous proposal. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 16:505-511.

Lamey, Andy (2008) Food Fight!  Davis versus Regan on the Ethics of Eating Beef. Journal of Social Philosophy 38:331-348

 Finally, those interested in some of the more practical and biological issues relevant to this debate, such as the effects of capture on fish survival and welfare, whether fish can feel pain and have the capacity to suffer, etc, I'd suggest digging up papers by the following authors:

Robert Arlinghaus, Steven J. Cooke, Victoria Braithwaite, Lynne Sneddon, James D. Rose


Arlinghaus and Cooke often tackle the really practical stuff (what happens to fish when they're caught, played and released, etc.).  Braithwaite, and to some degree Sneddon, work on the issue of pain in fish, and tend to come down on the side that fish do feel pain and might suffer.  James D. Rose, on the other hand, is biologist who comes down on the other side, and has been very critical of some of the work by Sneddon.  All the work is worth a read.


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[This is more deep-thinking that is good for me, so it is my hope and intention to bring you more ridiculous, irreverent and offensive material as soon as I recover and am back to my normal self.  I'd like to thank Erin Block, of the blog Mysteries Internal, for inspiring me to put this post up, after sitting on it for some time.  Her recent post on the ethical issues surrounding fishing for spawning fish was not only well-written and thought provoking, but the post and subsequent comments also increased my confidence that there are some thinking folks out there...]