Small rant

[prairiegardens]

On soapbox:
today went to see the salmon run in a smallish park outside Victoria. Hundreds of people show up with their kids for this and at least today several First Nations people were gaffing the salmon and just throwing them on the bank to let them suffocate. This to me is upsetting on several levels, not the least the total disregard for the frantic efforts of the salmon to get back to the river. One nearly made it and the closest guy just picked it up and tossed it back up onto the rocks ten feet away where a child tossed pebbles at it as he watched it die.

Now then IF you are going to allow gaffing fish in a park, which I object to..what's the point of a park if the living things in it are going to be harvested? (They could have done this further downstream but it's easier to reach the salmon in the park.) Anyway, if they are going to allow First Nations people to do this in the park then I think it ought to be made mandatory that they at least kill the fish as soon as they land them. It's inhumane and a lousy example for all the kids who are there with their parents about how to treat living things. It takes just a moment to kill a fish...so it says a lot that they couldn't be bothered to take that moment to give the fish mercy. One adult was talking to a small boy while they both watched a freshly caught salmon frantically thrashing about on the rocks, then he just left the salmon struggling and went back to get another. 

I found myself hoping that all the fish they got were thoroughly radioactive from the ongoing leakage from Fukushima and they all get the same sort of lingering and agonized death they inflicted on the fish. I'm not against them fishing, although I AM against allowing them to do it in the park, and but the sight of salmon casually tossed aside to die so unnecessarily slowly and in such distress is not acceptable. 

Truly, there are a lot of fine people in this old world, but sometimes it's hard to remember that. 

Steps down from soapbox. 

[rowan]

I have become disappointed with recreational fishing for just the same reason. Even though the recreational fishing association here in Aus recommends immediate humane killing, and has instructions for various ways of doing it on their website, most people don't. At least it is mandatory under cruelty laws for humane killing in all our fish farms where all fish are electrically stunned, but humane slaughter for ocean caught fish is only voluntary.

After the extensive scientific study a couple of years ago or so that showed conclusively that fish feel pain, I personally don't think there is any excuse for not enforcing more humnane handling.

[steev]

The notion of humane treatment of cousins we harvest for food has largely fallen out of favor; I think it was not uncommon for us to acknowledge the death of our prey as a debt of gratitude; that First Nations people would be so callous is, I suspect, in regard to fish, customary to them; the desire to harvest as much fish as possible in a certain time-frame; therefore, the effort to gaff without concern for the gaffed, perhaps they observe less immediate rituals of gratitude. That one kills a cousin for food obligates some recognition of the cousin's death is not a concept held by all people. We live by eating of ourselves, being related to all that lives on Earth, the only place we know that life exists. Certainly it behooves us to honor the sacrifice of those cousins we feed on (not that they want us to). Nothing lives that is not a child of our Great Mother Earth and so a cousin to us.

Were there really none who could have been delegated to dispatching the fish; really? Bullshit! What would it have taken but youngsters or oldsters with clubs? We're not talking skilled labor, just clocking a fish with a club.