Angling... 100 years from now?

[mikench]

I didn't feel I learned anything new Kev! All life responds to stimuli! Look at plants that open and close in tune with the sun or even the touch of an insect in the case of carnivorous plants! I am sure I have caught the same fish on occasion and by the look of some they have been caught many times! I can only conclude that the feelings/ pain they felt was less than the need/ requirement to feed!

It's a little trite but picking certain fruits, plants and fauna even gardening are not without their risks of pain through thorns or stinging reflexes. Those " inconviences" do not stop me doing it. I am sure that fish which predate others, perch on sticklebacks for example , feel discomfort but still do it!

I am glad you enjoyed the lecture and gained something from it! Animal welfare is an insoluble conundrum for humanity and mankind would not have progressed a great deal if we were all treehuggers ! I do not know all the answers and never will but discussion and a sharing of opinions, however diverse is always good!

 

[dorsetsteve]

Really the whole pain thing is a can of worms. Pain is such a subjective thing, for example one person may find being tattooed unbearable, others relaxing, that’s just one species. Compare how pain is experienced with a mammal to a simple life form such as a starfish, it’s quite clear your not making an effective comparison. We’ve all heard the whole “how would you like to be dragged along by a hook in your mouth”, it’s an anthropomorphism. I wouldn’t like that, my lips are very sensitive soft tissue, I also wouldn’t like to stick my face in gravel and route around in it, I’m not evolved for that. We’ve all hooked fish that haven’t run until the resistance of the line has been felt. Can fish feel, yes of corse. Do they experience those feeling the same way we do, almost certainly not.

On the subject of blood sports such as shooting and the aforementioned fox hunting, imo fox hunting was outlawed due to the dispatch rather than the kill which is why other such sports still exist. I think the wider public probably respect a farmers right to shoot a fox but find a drawn out chase followed by being torn apart by dogs unpalatable. The comparable here for us is probably live baiting.

What the Angling community could really do to help with public perception is to work a touch harder on conservation, particularly on club owned venues. Working in conjunction with the RSPB to throw up a few bird boxes and committing to a set percentage donation or investment into wildlife conservation which benifits us all would really give a solid answer to our “cost benifit ratio”. Few appearances on country file about the conservation commitments made would go a long way.

 

[mikench]

Pain thresholds are a subject in themselves whether they be physical, mental, emotional or just plain unfathomable! Sadly for me on the Richter scale of pain fish do not register highly as opposed to mammal and human pain! Elephants grieve, certain birds like albatrosses grieve and this pain is as unendurable as physical pain and have been perceived as purely human attributes.

I doubt mankind as we know it will be here in 100 years let alone the pursuit of fishing but I hope I am wrong!

 

[nottskev]

Pain thresholds are a subject in themselves whether they be physical, mental, emotional or just plain unfathomable! Sadly for me on the Richter scale of pain fish do not register highly as opposed to mammal and human pain! Elephants grieve, certain birds like albatrosses grieve and this pain is as unendurable as physical pain and have been perceived as purely human attributes.

I doubt mankind as we know it will be here in 100 years let alone the pursuit of fishing but I hope I am wrong!

Hi Mike - it's not that I'm particularly trying to disagree with you - I'm just following the discussion and your thought-provoking comments.

When you say fish are lower down the scale than birds and mammals, I think that IS the popular perception. And a reason why I think the science - and we are talking of science, rather than just our intuitions or personal beliefs - has something interesting to tell us. There is the possibility, because fish lack facial expression and don't make a noise, that we will overlook or underestimate their capacity to suffer. Especially if, as anglers, we have an obvious interest in playing it down. That is why, I think, we anglers are likely to find the lecture challenging - it looked at fish in a way we generally don't.

The interest for me, in that lecture, was in seeing a cool, factual look at the way fish are "set up" to process and experience sensation. Despite the fact that I've been trying to catch them for 50 years, I don't feel I need to dismiss a fresh perspective on the creatures, and I'm open to the idea, if it's put in front of me by a leading scientist in the field, that fish are more sentient and complex than we usually (like to) credit. As for learning something new, I'm happy to acknowledge that all that information about nociception at the level of the spinal cord, the nature of fish nerve fibres and so on was indeed new to me, and took me past the "Of course fish feel things" stage.

 

[thecrow]

To be honest a lot of it went over this thick bu££ers head

 

[nottskev]

To be honest a lot of it went over this thick bu££ers head

i watched it twice. And took notes. I'd have missed most of it, otherwise.

 

[dorsetsteve]

Without watching, not got a spare hour right now, I assume it explains that the vast majority of external nerve ending with similar sensations to our own are confined to the lateral line? If so that’s not new, equally it makes sense. Bottom feeders such as Carp don’t posses barbules for nothing.

 

[Philip]

The whole do fish feel pain question inevitably decends to a word definaition game around the word « pain ». In my opinion fish dont like what we do, and please for anyone that disagrees with the word « like » feel free to substitute it with something else.

I think its all irrelevant anyway in the context of justifying angling as a sport. The reason is because the general public are simply NEVER going to buy the idea that sticking a hook in a fish does not harm it.

Thats why I belive we should stop trying to to hide what we do under the carpet & stop pandering to everyone else . I recon its time to say yes we stick hooks in fish for fun but we are also the greater good and without us fish and enviroments for fish would be allot worse off as no one else will make up the shortfall or fill the gap if you take us away.

The bottom line and message we should be giving is that without anglers fish are MUCH worse off.

 

[thecrow]

Thats why I belive we should stop trying to to hide what we do under the carpet & stop pandering to everyone else

That imo opinion is exactly what is wrong with a lot of anglers, I am not ashamed of being an angler I don't care what the public think of what I do but if challenged I would maybe ask one question............. if you care for fish so much what have you done to improve their lot?

 

[nottskev]

Thats why I belive we should stop trying to to hide what we do under the carpet & stop pandering to everyone else . I recon its time to say yes we stick hooks in fish for fun but we are also the greater good and without us fish and enviroments for fish would be allot worse off as no one else will make up the shortfall or fill the gap if you take us away.

The bottom line and message we should be giving is that without anglers fish are MUCH worse off.

I agree with that. If the scientific evidence points increasingly to fish being more sentient than anglers used to like to claim, and having more in common with birds and animals than was previously thought, and people know this, it only makes us look like we have our heads in the sand if we persist in denying it.

It's hard to deny being hooked and caught - we say fish "fight", but as far as the fish knows it's facing a death struggle rather than a sporting contest, and that can't be fun - are likely to be painful and stressful for the individual fish, but we can reasonably argue that angling, in the long run, supports the broader mass of fish and the conditions they need to thrive, and we try to minimise the distress caused to individual fish. That's a more honest argument that doesn't tie us in knots with dodgy claims that fish are insensitive and don't mind being caught.

 

[Another Dave]

Will kids still be allowed to go crabbing? Catch a butterfly in a net, what about a minnow. At least the intention is to release them to get on with their lives.

How many insects feel like they're facing a death struggle when they hit the front of your car? If we count the really tiny ones then any car journey must cost hundreds of deaths per mile, let's see the self-driving cars swerve out of the way of that one.

 

[Another Dave]

The other thing to bear in mind is that giving any kind of sh1t about minimising animal suffering is essentially a very british thing and the chances are the country will have been sold to the chinese well before 100 years.

 

[mikench]

Do fish feel pain? — Forschungsverbund Berlin

This is a German study with an interesting conclusion against the recent law changes in Germany !

 

[nottskev]

Do fish feel pain? — Forschungsverbund Berlin

This is a German study with an interesting conclusion against the recent law changes in Germany !

I read it. What a way to start the day

The issues are hotly debated by scientists. In the study of pain, the distinction between nociception ( neurological) and pain (emotional, psychological) is important. If you have surgery under anaesthetic, your body will have nociception (nerves reacting to being cut) but not pain, as you won't, hopefully, be aware of it.

Some scientists argue that fish lack the brain part - the neocortex - to allow experience of pain in a way similar to humans or animals with developed neocortex. No neocortex = no pain, is the claim.

Equally, other scientists hold that pain can be experienced in more than one area of the brain, and point out that, judged by this standard, we'd have to believe that birds, amphibians and even some mammals can't experience pain, which we don't, generally.

The German study puts it that fish can't experience pain comparable to how humans experience it - but others point out, logically, that pets and farm animals can't, but we accept their capacity to suffer in their own way.

And our understanding of it all develops as the debate and the science goes on.

I don't think it does us any harm to be up with the debate. I could show Professor Braithwaite a thing or two about catching roach; I don't mind accepting she can tell me things I don't know about fish neurobiology.

 

[mikench]

Agreed Kev! Scientists do not know it all and are often impractical, intransigent and dogmatic! I know I am married to one!:wh

We can always learn something new and must understand the arguments which we may have to argue with and rebut! Look after those tench!

 

[no-one in particular]

I remember once some years ago when the fox hunting debate was getting going a picture in the Daily Mirror I think it was. It was a stag that had been run into a stream exhausted and a huntsman had hold of its antlers and was trying to force its head under the water to drown it; it was a shocking picture. I doubt this hardly ever happened, I don't know much about the sport but it wouldn't have mattered, that one picture must have turned a few million Daily Mirror readers against fox/stag hunting in one day; the power of the press. They might be rare or just one offs but I wonder what pictures, images, stories they would get hold of if they waded into any future national debate on banning angling? And will our so well thought out arguments that still sound like desperate justification to me (sorry they just do and they will to non anglers) be powerful enough!
Personally I would promote that fishing does a lot to introduce youngsters into nature and contributes to the mental and psychological welfare of the nations mentally stressed citizens; it may or may not but it will look good..

I will give you an idea of what I mean above, once when fishing on a pier some blokes were catching a lot of mackerel and they started stamping on them trying to force them between the planks of the pier floor and laughing as they were doing it. There was a balcony with day trippers on it overlooking this and they were literally gasping in horror and turning their kids faces away from it, we put a stop to it of course and I only ever saw it happen once, a one off but just imagine a picture of that surfaced and the press got hold of it. It wouldn't matter it was just an isolated incident, it would be used to tar all anglers. The propaganda fight could be a hard one to win.

 

[mikench]

See my post no 52 above!

 

[nottskev]

Agreed Kev! Scientists do not know it all and are often impractical, intransigent and dogmatic! I know I am married to one!:wh

We can always learn something new and must understand the arguments which we may have to argue with and rebut! Look after those tench!

Agreed indeed! Although, I'd add, we have also to be prepared to sometimes accept arguments we don't like if they are compelling.

Maybe it would take a statistician to tell us if dogmatism and intransigence were more prevalent inside the scientific community or outside it?

Any tench will get a warm welcome and any support they need.

 

[thecrow]

If I thought that angling was cruel I would stop doing it but as cruelty is an entirely human invented emotion only perceived by humans that wont happen. I see things that are just wrong that only involve the treatment of animals by humans but there is no cruelty in nature and man has always hunted, firstly for food and now for sport, I know which I would prefer if I was a fish

I don't know any scientists but I cannot believe that any of them looking at whether fish feel pain do not have their own views on it before setting out to prove one way or another depending on their previously formed opinions that may have been formed before they became scientists or even as a child, its human nature imo to have opinions on things without any definitive proof that's why they are just opinions and not fact, lots of times these opinions are formed from experience either directly from being hands on or indirectly such as following on what parents thoughts and opinions were.

 

[mikench]

Wasn't St Peter a fisherman and isn't the symbol of christians a fish? There are lies , damm lies and statistics! In most debates one can put forward cogent arguments both for and against ! The hard part is keeping an open mind throughout and dont I know

In my summing up I concur with many of the viewpoints expressed and firmly believe Angling has a future!