The bunny-huggers — in this mutation, fish-fondlers — are upon us again. A study group in Birmingham, led by a Dr Lynne Sneddon, is claiming that there is such a thing as ”trout trauma”. Experiments have proved that fish feel pain and suffer stress when being caught by hook and line.
In order to reach these conclusions, Sneddon and her team kept rainbow trout in a tank in a laboratory and, after somehow constraining them, carefully injected bee venom into their lips. At this some of the trout rocked back and forth.
Sneddon holds that this proves that fish, like humans, have things called nociceptors — a fact already proved dozens of times. Nociceptors cause reflex actions such as pulling away when we touch something like a hot iron. She says that the presence of nociceptors, ”fulfils the full criteria for animal pain” — as indeed my own nociceptors made me recoil at that phrase.
For her research Sneddon has, as expected, received the shrill approval of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta). The European director of the organisation, Dawn Carr, has added her own scientific bon mot: ”Marine biologists and common sense tell us that if you trick a small animal into impaling his [sic] or herself in the mouth, that animal is suffering.” (Surely that should have ended ”he or she is suffering”? If you’re going to be excruciatingly politically correct with regard to the gender of fish, at least go the whole hog.)
A contradictory note has been sounded by a fish biologist, Dr Bruno Broughton, scientific adviser to the (English) National Angling Association. He says it’s long been known that fish have sensory cells around their mouths. ”Nor is it surprising that, when their lips are injected with poison, fish react and behave abnormally.”
He added that it is an entirely different matter to draw conclusions about the ability of fish to feel pain — a psychological experience for which they simply do not have the brain power.
These opinions have backing in research undertaken in the Department of Zoology and Physiology at Wyoming State University. Summing up some fairly dense scientific data, Dr James D Rose has stated: ”Awareness of pain in humans depends on functions of specific regions of the cerebral cortex and fish lack the essential brain regions or any functional equivalent, making it untenable that they can experience pain. Fish have the simplest types of brains of any vertebrates” (Trout & Salmon, February 2003).
An article such as this is not the place to weigh the scientific merits as to whether fish either feel pain and/or experience stress when being caught.
A consideration which does enter when considering the Peta stance is something called by the posh word, ”anthropomorphism” — in its simplest definition, the tendency to ascribe human emotions and feelings to animals.
In its most commonly used form it’s ”Look, darling, at how Daddy and Mommy Deer are teaching Baby Deer to trust and love the wise old Grandfather Owl in the tree above.” Nothing wrong with that, unless you’re still believing it into your 40s.
At its most absurd, anthropomorphism is as John Maytham described it so succinctly on the radio when commenting on the Sneddon findings: ”Can’t you just hear the screams of terror as you approach the broccoli plant with a knife in your hand?” (Carr would have been shocked that Maytham didn’t specify whether it was the female or male broccoli doing the loudest screaming.)
But he wasn’t that far off the mark, for there do exist in the lunatic fringe those who believe plants experience pain and fear exactly like we do.
More sensible aspects of angling decorum are there for the taking. Some fly-anglers use barbless hooks, not because these might cause less pain, but because in fulfilling the so-called ”catch-and-release” practice, barbless hooks cause less damage when extracted. The use of ultra-light tackle is frowned on because it means an angler will take a long time to land a fish. Plain old shock can cause abnormal levels of lactic acid in the muscles of a fish played for a long time. When released, the fish may not recover.
Bag limits on streams and lakes limit the taking of fish merely for the fun of carving notches on the mental trout rod.
What the experiments in Birmingham will unleash will be another hysterical outrushing of England’s raucous anti-angling lobby, rather akin to their anti-fox-hunting cousins. England hosts some 3,8-million anglers, considerably more than the scarlet-suited stirrup-cup set, so it’s going to be an interesting confrontation.
In South Africa, thank heavens, we haven’t reached the level of hysteria that caused a deranged youth to set fire to a department store in England as a protest against grouse-shooting in Scotland. I do hope someone thought of injecting bee venom into his lips. Could well be he had a developing brain.