Is fishing a cruel sport?

[The Yosemite Bear]

Corn meal and Tabasco sauce after your done cooking it.

Actually I cut their necks and DO eat what I catch.

remember keep the PETA assholes away from the bear.

The Bear has no problem with foxes, and thinks that all canids are most cool.

[Queeb Salaron]

Says a voice from the country whose recipes for EVERYTHING contain the words:

1. Take whatever you're cooking and put it in a pot.
2. Burn the fuck out of it.
3. Let sit.
4. Serve cold.

Wrong.

WHOA!!!! That was a BRILLIANT RETORT!!

::Writes it down:: Thanks! I'll use this one later!!

[NecronLord]

[Batman]

You tap your fishtank and the poor bugger fears for his life?
Do I really want to know what usually follows the tapping ?

He's got his own room. [S]He's not particularly used to it.

I took freaking forever to write my post so I missed the one were you brought it up. Noted for future reference.
And I WAS joking, you know.
A fish with her own room. Being your pet must be nice...

[Queeb Salaron]

Queeb, I've never agreed with you so much.

::Thinks:: I don't think you've ever agreed with me at all.

[NecronLord]

Queeb, your unsupported assertion does not have any content to actually refute.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Given this article claiming fish feel pain...

Yes, yes, fish feel pain, but I don't have the least bit of sympathy for the little buggers, especially when they lurk in places where my lures get snagged.

There is not a whole lot of room in the brainpan of the typical sport fish for a brain that can handle much more than A = B. For example, a small moving object tends to equal food. Pain = run away. It's not like hunting mammals, whom might have enough conscience to feel the usual terror or despair.

Now if you will excuse me, I've just finished tying a new lure to my line.

*casts, starts reeling in*

Awww fuck! Not again!

[Kelly Antilles]

Fishing as a SPORT is wrong. Fishing to EAT is perfectly fine. Just like hunting for SPORT is wrong. Hunting to EAT is fine. Come on, we're fucking OMNIVORES.

[NecronLord]

No mammal can feel dispair but humans. Dispair is an emotion and thus a function of sentience.

Terror is a word for extreme fear, usually induced by hormones.

[Batman]

Fishing as a SPORT is wrong. Fishing to EAT is perfectly fine. Just like hunting for SPORT is wrong. Hunting to EAT is fine. Come on, we're fucking OMNIVORES.

Can we seperate the two in this day and age? Unless you are talking about people who actually NEED to hunt/fish or starve, I would say it's done for sport primarily, even if the catch IS for consumtion eventually.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

No mammal can feel dispair but humans. Dispair is an emotion and thus a function of sentience.

Terror is a word for extreme fear, usually induced by hormones.

But most mammals seem to have a measure, albeit a usually small measure, of sentience. Especially many of the larger animals we hunt (Such as bears, who seem to demonstrate sentience in heaps. They learn how to break into cars, for example, and even learn which makes and models are the easiest to break into. And, from many hunters anecdotes, they seem to have a sense of self, insofar as they've been known to move in such a way as to avoid leaving tracks and they set themselves up to be able to observe human hunters without being noticed themselves.)

[Durandal]

Dear god. They're fucking fish. Fish get eaten by other aquatic predators all the time. We just happen to be a more effective predator.

[NecronLord]

Sentience isn't technically learning ability (as it is commonly used), it is the ability to have complex (i.e. not entirely hormonal) emotions.

No one is saying that they shouldn't be hunted. (unless they happen to be my pets, in which case I object. Strenuously) I only say it's moronic to think they can't feel pain.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Sentience isn't technically learning ability (as it is commonly used), it is the ability to have complex (i.e. not entirely hormonal) emotions.

No one is saying that they shouldn't be hunted. (unless they happen to be my pets, in which case I object. Strenuously) I only say it's moronic to think they can't feel pain.

But I'm saying that it's possible for large, more 'sophisticated' mammals to have complex emotions. Assuming humans are the only ones to do so smacks of the same narrow-minded homocentrism that kept the Earth at the center of the universe for two thousand years.

And yes, it's moronic to assume fish don't feel pain. However, a fish doesn't have much more central nervous system than a medulla and some interface bits. It can't really 'suffer' in the sense we think of.

For that matter, earthworms feel pain, but an earthworm has even less of a nervous system than a fish does! Should we ban farming on the off chance that we might accidentally hack a few earthworms to pieces? And should be also ban fishing because it might cause the earthworm some pain as well?

[Rye]

Queeb, your unsupported assertion does not have any content to actually refute.

Doesn't lancashire hotpot fit into the "put everything in a pot and cook it for ages, let it go cold,then microwave it" category?

[Admiral Valdemar]

Queeb, your unsupported assertion does not have any content to actually refute.

Doesn't lancashire hotpot fit into the "put everything in a pot and cook it for ages, let it go cold,then microwave it" category?

Fuck YES!

I was served that Monday, my first day back at uni and they serve that shit to us at the dining hal.

I can only imagine what the international students were thinking, the Chinese vomiting over how bad it was, the Spanish laughing as they go for a paella and the Americans not getting fatter over it.

[NecronLord]

Yes, but the fact is it's meant to be served hot and not left to congeal

(I don't deny that english food is generally cooked in a pot, or oven and burnt to ashes)

[Kelly Antilles]

[Arnold Judas Rimmer, SSC, BBC] GASPATCHO! [/Rimmer]

[NecronLord]

[Arnold Judas Rimmer, SSC, BBC] GASPATCHO! [/Rimmer]

It's not english AFAIK.

(Don't forget the 12 years long service)

[Kelly Antilles]

I only saw the first part of your post NL... and for some reason that scene in Red Dwarf popped into my mind.

[Admiral Valdemar]

[Arnold Judas Rimmer, SSC, BBC] GASPATCHO! [/Rimmer]

Served hot of course.

[Rye]

Yes, but the fact is it's meant to be served hot and not left to congeal

(I don't deny that english food is generally cooked in a pot, or oven and burnt to ashes)

It's the taste of home! Far superior to all other food bar chocolate.

[Peregrin Toker]

I quitted sport fishing because of the moral quandaries against it held by Desmond Morris, a renowned biologist.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Given this article claiming fish feel pain...

No, and neither is hunting, even with bows. Or dogs. Or traps.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Fishing as a SPORT is wrong. Fishing to EAT is perfectly fine. Just like hunting for SPORT is wrong. Hunting to EAT is fine. Come on, we're fucking OMNIVORES.

Well, in defence of sport hunting, many great sport hunters - Theodore Roosevelt for instance - have also been the greatest and most effectual conservators. They understand what actually must be done to maintain animal populations, and they desire to do so, that their contest may be continued and that future generations may also enjoy the challenge.

Furthermore, they also have standards for the animals they bring in which greatly lower the number of kills and cause them to leave most of the animals in a herd or pack alone except for the eldest. Culling those lets the young simply come up from the bottom and take their places and doesn't appreciably affect the populace, and may indeed even improve its health. Sport hunters have their place.