Angling - Capacity For Pain

Capacity For Pain

Animal protection advocates have raised concerns about the suffering of fish caused by angling. In light of recent research, some countries, like Germany, have banned specific types of fishing and the British RSPCA now formally prosecutes individuals who are cruel to fish.

Experiments done by William Tavolga provide evidence that fish have pain and fear responses. For instance, in Tavolga’s experiments, toadfish grunted when electrically shocked and over time they came to grunt at the mere sight of an electrode. Additional tests conducted at both the University of Edinburgh and the Roslin Institute, in which bee venom and acetic acid was injected into the lips of rainbow trout, resulted in fish rubbing their lips along the sides and floors of their tanks, which the researchers believe was an effort to relieve themselves of pain. One researcher argues about the definition of pain used in the studies.

In 2003, Scottish scientists at the University of Edinburgh performing research on rainbow trout concluded that fish exhibit behaviors often associated with pain, and the brains of fish fire neurons in the same way human brains do when experiencing pain. James D. Rose of the University of Wyoming critiqued the study, claiming it was flawed, mainly since it did not provide proof that fish possess "conscious awareness, particularly a kind of awareness that is meaningfully like ours". Rose argues that since the fish brain is rather different from ours, fish are not conscious, whence reactions similar to human reactions to pain instead have other causes. Rose had published his own opinion a year earlier arguing that fish cannot feel pain as they lack the appropriate neocortex in the brain. However, animal behaviorist Temple Grandin argues that fish could still have consciousness without a neocortex because "different species can use different brain structures and systems to handle the same functions." The position that Rose takes also fails to address unresolved empirical and philosophical considerations concerning pain, as raised by principles of epistemology, solipsism, existentialism, and comparative ethology. Until such problems are far more fundamentally resolved, there are strong arguments for refraining from causing the appearance of pain or behaviour consistent with pain, insofar as such things might be reasonably avoidable.