I’m looking for podcasts, papers, or reviews on fish sentience.
Specifically:
Long form interview about the moral weight of fish.
Papers which estimate their moral weight
Information on the long term damage of fish hooks, being out of water, or the moral harm of fishing.
I would also like to know if there are practical methods to reduce the amount of harm done if you are fishing.
Rethink priorities had their moral weights report which placed salmon at 0.056, I’m not sure I understood completely what that figure meant. I think this means they have 5% of the sentience of a human? I also don’t know how to interpret that number.
I would like to read or listen to academic discussion about the ethics of catch and release fishing.
Quick research shows: Some people use Velcro to catch the fish’s teeth and use a net to land it. You can keep the fish submerged in the net while you take off the Velcro if it’s caught on there. I don’t know how much suffering this would be but if you’re into fishing this might be a solution.
If there are any EAs who fish, do you have any practices for making the experience as painless as possible for the fish?
Are there any advancements being made to create a fishing experience which is nearly completely pain free?
I would love to hear from someone who has thought this through.
Here’s what I know can reduce the suffering of the fish if you do decide to fish:
Remove the barbs on the hook
Choose a small hook and use only one hook rather than three-pronged hooks
Reduce the amount of time the fish has out of the water and gently hold the fish.
But if I could I would like to remove the hook out of the experience entirely and just move towards something that gently reels in the fish. I would love to hear if there’s some technology that does this.
Also actually giving the fish food could reduce the unpleasantness+give them pleasure when caught.
But there’s probably still some risk of longer term injury and pain. And it might condition them to be less risk-averse, and make them more prone to being caught by less humane fishers.
I’m looking for podcasts, papers, or reviews on fish sentience.
Specifically:
Long form interview about the moral weight of fish.
Papers which estimate their moral weight
Information on the long term damage of fish hooks, being out of water, or the moral harm of fishing.
I would also like to know if there are practical methods to reduce the amount of harm done if you are fishing.
Rethink priorities had their moral weights report which placed salmon at 0.056, I’m not sure I understood completely what that figure meant. I think this means they have 5% of the sentience of a human? I also don’t know how to interpret that number.
I would like to read or listen to academic discussion about the ethics of catch and release fishing.
There actually was an EA-adjacent podcast about this in 2018, from Future Perfect. It discusses a japanese method called ikejime, which instantly kills the fish and renders it immobile.
Alternatively, just get into (legal) magnet fishing instead. No harm done.
Quick research shows: Some people use Velcro to catch the fish’s teeth and use a net to land it. You can keep the fish submerged in the net while you take off the Velcro if it’s caught on there. I don’t know how much suffering this would be but if you’re into fishing this might be a solution.
If there are any EAs who fish, do you have any practices for making the experience as painless as possible for the fish?
Are there any advancements being made to create a fishing experience which is nearly completely pain free?
I would love to hear from someone who has thought this through.
Here’s what I know can reduce the suffering of the fish if you do decide to fish:
Remove the barbs on the hook
Choose a small hook and use only one hook rather than three-pronged hooks
Reduce the amount of time the fish has out of the water and gently hold the fish.
But if I could I would like to remove the hook out of the experience entirely and just move towards something that gently reels in the fish. I would love to hear if there’s some technology that does this.
Also actually giving the fish food could reduce the unpleasantness+give them pleasure when caught.
But there’s probably still some risk of longer term injury and pain. And it might condition them to be less risk-averse, and make them more prone to being caught by less humane fishers.
I trout fish, and I can assure you that the fish I have caught are far too stressed to eat so that wouldn’t work for trout fishing at least.
What are your thoughts about catch and release fishing on bigger game fish? Have you seen any methods for doing it that seem safe?