But they clearly experience pain and possibly fear:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_fish
“Dr Lynne Sneddon, with her colleagues, Braithwaite, and Gentle, were the first to discover nociceptors (pain receptors) in fish. She stated that fish demonstrate pain-related changes in physiology and behaviour, that are reduced by painkillers, and they show higher brain activity when painfully stimulated.
Professor Victoria Braithwaite, in her book, Do Fish Feel Pain?, wrote that, fish, like birds and mammals, have a capacity for self-awareness, and can feel pain.”
Donald Broom, Professor of Animal Welfare, Cambridge University, England, said that most mammalian pain systems are also found in fish, who can feel fear and have emotions which are controlled in the fish brain in areas anatomically different but functionally very similar to those in mammals.
I'd lead instead with the fact that fishing is largely an ecological disaster.
It is like the argument against eating meat based entirely on killing being bad, but we can see that killing happens all over the place in nature. However, the problem is that we've gotten way too good at killing and need to practice a lot more restraint.
Humans are the most apex of apex predators... I hope that doesn't disqualify us from deserving compassion.
But if part of your reasoning for not extending compassion/humane treatment to another creature is based on the degree to which it appears to extend compassion/humane treatment to other creatures... that would seem to imply we should extend less compassion to you vs. humans who extend more compassion to these same creatures, right?
I'm not suggesting that we treat you worse than other people, but rather suggest that this line of reasoning might need to be reconsidered.
That is, your rule seems to put you at a disadvantage if applied universally. Am I missing something?
It's against my base instincts, but the older I get, the more I try to extend compassion unconditionally. Among other things, I find it just makes me a calmer person. YMMV.
Why is this against your base instincts? It’s quite the opposite for me so I’m curious how that developed in you.
Maybe I’m not a very compassionate person but if you spend any amount of time with fish it’s really hard to see anything significantly beyond reptile-brain level of primitive understanding of the world around them (with obvious exceptions for dolphins, whales, and to a lesser extent sharks).
Most of them would never think twice about murdering thousands to propagate their own species. Such is the fundamental nature of life we all were born into.
The fact it’s an asphyxiation over ice over an hour vs being eaten alive in nature isn’t much of a big difference.
But maybe like lobsters there’s a middle ground? The shark fin thing is clear bad idea but calling out fishing in general probably won’t win you many supporters.