Fish don't feel pain

Article from a The Daily Telegraph:

"Fish lack the brains to feel pain, says the latest school of thought
By Rajeev Syal in London


Anglers rest easy. Fish cannot feel pain, the largest study into piscine neurology has concluded.

An academic study comparing the nervous systems and responses of fish and mammals has found that fishes' brains are not sufficiently developed to allow them to sense pain or fear.

The study is the work of James D Rose, a professor of zoology and physiology at the University of Wyoming, who has been working on questions of neurology for almost 30 years. He has examined data on the responses of animals to pain and stimulus from scores of studies collected over the past 15 years.

His report, published in the American journal Reviews of Fisheries Science, has concluded that awareness of pain depends on functions of specific regions of the cerebral cortex which fish do not possess.

Professor Rose, 60, said that previous studies which had indicated that fish can feel pain had confused nociception - responding to a threatening stimulus - with feeling pain.

"Pain is predicated on awareness," he said. "The key issue is the distinction between nociception and pain. A person who is anaesthetised in an operating theatre will still respond physically to an external stimulus, but he or she will not feel pain. Anyone who has seen a chicken with its head cut off will know that, while its body can respond to stimuli, it cannot be feeling pain."

Professor Rose said he was enormously concerned with the welfare of fish, but that campaigners should concentrate on ensuring that they were able to enjoy clean and well-managed rivers and seas.

Despite the findings of Professor Rose's study, a spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which has invested heavily in an anti-angling campaign, said: "We believe that fishing is barbaric. Of course animals can feel pain. They have sensitivity, if only to avoid predators.""




Now, I don't eat any seafood because I think it would be hypocritical of me to complain when a dive site doesn't have much marine life and then go chow down on a few of the critters.

Also, part of my reasoning was that I thought that fish were killed in less than kind circumstances. Now that reasoning has been challenged.

Any opinions...

Depending on the fish, fishing may or may not have much to do with a particular species population. And even when it does we frequently come up with incredibly stupid fishing rules...
Just a couple of examples - Jewfish - a near catastrophic casualty of spearfishing. With no natural predators, these beauties were easy targets for us in the 70's and 80's - until suddenly there were none, and we just as suddenly realized that there's a point at which a species can't stand the pressure. Luckily they were protected before they were wiped out and we're seeing 'em again.
Speckled trout - Fishing has little to do with trout populations, but habitat destruction and polution have decimated their number.
Let's look at a supremely stupid rule - minimum size limits. This is a holdover from land game management practices and is super stupid when applied to fish. Why in the world have a minimum size limit? It's the big fish that are the big reproducers. In mature fish a little bit bigger fish may produce ten times as many eggs! Not only that, but mortality in released fish - especially deep-dwelling fish like red snapper hauled up from so fast their swim bladders embolize - is high, and allowing the throwing back of undersized fish just means more fish killed, and much, much more reproduction capacity removed. It would make sense to limit the number of fish taken, and to make small fish count in the number. The only kind of size limit that makes any sense in fishing is a maximum size limit, to protect the breeders.
The nature of fish reproduction is that usually, there are plenty of fry to populate the existing habitat, and it's habitat loss and not the taking of fish that is the major limiting factor (there are notable exceptions, like cod & swordfish).
My point is that there's tremendous misinformation and even more tremendous mismanagement of the resource. And public education is difficult.
No easy answers - learn, learn, learn and fight for sanity in fishing regulations - and especially fight for clean water.
Rick

From one Rick to another, I need to make a correction on your species terminology. The newly adopted "PC" name for the fish you mentioned is the Goliath Grouper.

Incidentally, I agree completely with your statements on fisheries management.

Rick

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Rick Murchison once bubbled...

Just a couple of examples - Jewfish - a near catastrophic casualty of spearfishing. With no natural predators, these beauties were easy targets for us in the 70's and 80's - until suddenly there were none, and we just as suddenly realized that there's a point at which a species can't stand the pressure. Luckily they were protected before they were wiped out and we're seeing 'em again.
Rick

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2 points:

1. Jewfish were only killed in such great numbers because of the UNSPORTSMAN-LIKE CONDUCT of many spearfisherman. Hunting on scuba is like using a helocopter to hunt ducks. Un-ethical hunting practices like scuba-hunting will destroy a fishery in a very short time. Have you ever tried hunting Large grouper freediving? I've been doing it for years. that's sport. they kick my ass all the time. everytime I see a scuba diver with a gun it makes me want to slap them.

2. who cares if they feel pain? They're Yummy!

Willer

Ask anyone who has had to run tests on them. And the Animal Care "ethics" committees that have to approve the experiments/tests certainly think they feel pain - there's pages and pages of protocols on how to anesthetize fish (procedure varies depending on whether you want them to live through the anaesthetic or simply want to do away with them in a painless and low-stress manner).

Is severe stress (which can result in the death of the fish) all that fundamentally different from pain anyways?

What do we feel when CO2 builds up? It's not pain... and it's not pleasant.

RM: big fish are the big reproducers, but if you place a size maximum, you run the risk of losing the younger cohorts that are coming up to replace the adults. I'm not sure there is a "size" answer to this problem at all. I agree with you on the pollution aspects - the dumping of pesticides, especially insecticides (which is only going to get worse as more and more malathion is used in the desperate and probably futile attempt to control West Nile virus) into fresh water bodies is starving fish by killing the invertebrate food base.
Golf courses and homes with lawns that run down to a water body are pretty bad for this too.

SK - I don't eat "seafood " - except shrimp - either (my official excuse is that it's too much like work and that i know way too much about toxins to ever eat shellfish) but I do eat fish. Most animals killed for food die under stress, like it or not. All we can do (other than go vegan) is try to ensure that it's as quick and clean a death as possible. JM$0.02

Rick,

There are too many Jewfish in my neighborhood. You're welcome to some of them. Maybe if we could spread them out a tad, everyone would be happy.

GearHead,

I strive for PI. Please explain why naming a beautiful animal after Jews is offensive, but renaming it after someone who is famous for killing Jews is inoffensive? I don't understand this concept.

Amphibious,

Hunting while free diving is certainly more difficult than hunting on SCUBA in some ways, in others it is more difficult. I've hunted with both methods. Neither method gives the advantage to the hunter. In most cases, the fish does not end up on the table. Hunting on SCUBA takes far fewer fish than line fishing and enormously fewer fish than commericial methods. I've never hunted ducks, certainly not from a helicopter, I'd imagine it would scare the ducks away. SCUBA scares the grouper away, but unlike a helicopter and ducks, divers can't out run the grouper.

Walter,

The simple fact that a huge number of people are offended and upset by the name is enough for me to not use the term. Clearly, you and others can do as you wish.

Walter once bubbled...
GearHead,

I strive for PI. Please explain why naming a beautiful animal after Jews is offensive, but renaming it after someone who is famous for killing Jews is inoffensive? I don't understand this concept.

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GearHead once bubbled...
Walter,

The simple fact that a huge number of people are offended and upset by the name is enough for me to not use the term. Clearly, you and others can do as you wish.

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Why was it called a jewfish in the first place?

"Didjewseethesizeofthatfish"

O-ring,

There are several stories about the origin. I don't know the answer. One story is the flesh is so white and clean it brought to mind kosher food.

GearHead,

"The simple fact that a huge number of people are offended and upset by the name is enough for me to not use the term."

What leads you to believe this? Reminds me of the American Indians who point out everyone born in America is a "Native American." There's a big difference between being sensitive to feelings and assuming a problem where none exists.