Their lives could be bad overall, or a procreation asymmetry is true, and so increasing their populations could be bad.
Non-target species in the same fisheries may be harmed. If I recall correctly, anchovies eat small arthropods, including zooplancton, so reducing anchovy catch may decrease their populations, and you might think that’s bad, because you think these arthropods have good lives and it’s better for more of them to exist. See
On the other hand, you might think the effects on these small arthropods are good, or it’s good to replace these arthropods with more anchovies, because the additional anchovies have better lives in total than the lost arthropods.
Another potential risk is that groups will take this kind of intervention on and use it on overfishing/overfished fisheries, increasing the populations so much that more fish will be caught by humans in the long run.
Sorry, this will be a bit of a disorganised ramble
I think this type of reasoning is where utilitarian ethics stop making sense.
It seems reasonable to me to assume wild animals generally “want to live”, based on their instinctive responses to stimuli, including both the fish and whomever they eat. Perhaps in some circumstances they don’t—e.g. when starved because of overpopulation.
These effects—fish eating more zooplancton, or either fish or zooplancton having worse lives as a result of some chain of effects from deciding wether or not to kill them, are so far out of our control, especially when discussing marginal changes. On the other hand, the direct violence of killing them* is.
I find it hard to consistently defend deontological theories, but the conclusions of utilitarianism seem to me even worse here—e.g. should humans identify, for all species, whether they enjoy life or not, and drive all those who don’t extinct? If we believe they all enjoy life, should we kill all predators? There are so many ways such conclusions can be wrong, morally or even in terms of logic** or science.
*For farmed fish, it can similarly be argued that we cause them lives full of suffering by overpopulating or by mistreatment. Though killing wild fish is bad, this does not imply that bringing farmed fish into life is good. Still, I don’t even buy into the inverted idea that bringing wild fish into existence is good.
**What I mean in wrong logic here is not that the conclusion doesn’t follow from the assumptions, but rather that the logical framing or solution ideas are wrong—for example treating the species as one unit instead of each fish individually, thus potentially killing lots of happy fish in order to euthanise others who are suffering. I think most agree this would be wrong.
I think animals are often motivated by pain, fear and frustration to avoid things that would kill them in the short term, so it’s hard to take their responses and the appearance of wanting to live as evidence that their lives are worth starting or continuing.
I think the issues here are plausibly complex and subtle on deontological views. The harm anchovies cause to arthropods is also direct violence, just not by what we would normally consider to be moral agents. We aren’t deciding for this intervention whether or not we will personally kill anchovies or arthropods; we’re influencing others to do so more or less, and some of those others are humans who wouldn’t be sensitive to the harms to nonhuman animals either way, and some are anchovies. The anchovies harming arthropods isn’t much further out of our control, just one or two steps further along the causal chain, which is already at least a few steps long.
Maybe one way to reconcile your intuitions here with consequentialism would be through “person-affecting” views.
Hey Michael, thanks for your thoughts. Would you agree that these risks could apply to any intervention that seeks to reduce the amount of commercial fishing that happens? In that case, it seems to me that these would be two important crucial considerations for the wild fish advocacy movement, and hence very important to research further. I think we’ve discussed these points briefly before—let me know if you’re keen to talk about them further, I’d be interested in collaborating on some questions like these in the future.
Two other potential risks:
Their lives could be bad overall, or a procreation asymmetry is true, and so increasing their populations could be bad.
Non-target species in the same fisheries may be harmed. If I recall correctly, anchovies eat small arthropods, including zooplancton, so reducing anchovy catch may decrease their populations, and you might think that’s bad, because you think these arthropods have good lives and it’s better for more of them to exist. See
https://reducing-suffering.org/trophic-cascades-caused-fishing/
https://reducing-suffering.org/marine-trophic-level-contains-total-suffering/
On the other hand, you might think the effects on these small arthropods are good, or it’s good to replace these arthropods with more anchovies, because the additional anchovies have better lives in total than the lost arthropods.
Another potential risk is that groups will take this kind of intervention on and use it on overfishing/overfished fisheries, increasing the populations so much that more fish will be caught by humans in the long run.
Sorry, this will be a bit of a disorganised ramble
I think this type of reasoning is where utilitarian ethics stop making sense.
It seems reasonable to me to assume wild animals generally “want to live”, based on their instinctive responses to stimuli, including both the fish and whomever they eat. Perhaps in some circumstances they don’t—e.g. when starved because of overpopulation.
These effects—fish eating more zooplancton, or either fish or zooplancton having worse lives as a result of some chain of effects from deciding wether or not to kill them, are so far out of our control, especially when discussing marginal changes. On the other hand, the direct violence of killing them* is.
I find it hard to consistently defend deontological theories, but the conclusions of utilitarianism seem to me even worse here—e.g. should humans identify, for all species, whether they enjoy life or not, and drive all those who don’t extinct? If we believe they all enjoy life, should we kill all predators? There are so many ways such conclusions can be wrong, morally or even in terms of logic** or science.
*For farmed fish, it can similarly be argued that we cause them lives full of suffering by overpopulating or by mistreatment. Though killing wild fish is bad, this does not imply that bringing farmed fish into life is good. Still, I don’t even buy into the inverted idea that bringing wild fish into existence is good.
**What I mean in wrong logic here is not that the conclusion doesn’t follow from the assumptions, but rather that the logical framing or solution ideas are wrong—for example treating the species as one unit instead of each fish individually, thus potentially killing lots of happy fish in order to euthanise others who are suffering. I think most agree this would be wrong.
I think animals are often motivated by pain, fear and frustration to avoid things that would kill them in the short term, so it’s hard to take their responses and the appearance of wanting to live as evidence that their lives are worth starting or continuing.
I think the issues here are plausibly complex and subtle on deontological views. The harm anchovies cause to arthropods is also direct violence, just not by what we would normally consider to be moral agents. We aren’t deciding for this intervention whether or not we will personally kill anchovies or arthropods; we’re influencing others to do so more or less, and some of those others are humans who wouldn’t be sensitive to the harms to nonhuman animals either way, and some are anchovies. The anchovies harming arthropods isn’t much further out of our control, just one or two steps further along the causal chain, which is already at least a few steps long.
Maybe one way to reconcile your intuitions here with consequentialism would be through “person-affecting” views.
Hey Michael, thanks for your thoughts. Would you agree that these risks could apply to any intervention that seeks to reduce the amount of commercial fishing that happens? In that case, it seems to me that these would be two important crucial considerations for the wild fish advocacy movement, and hence very important to research further.
I think we’ve discussed these points briefly before—let me know if you’re keen to talk about them further, I’d be interested in collaborating on some questions like these in the future.
Ya, these are pretty general risks for fishing inyerventions and other interventions that might change wild animal population sizes.