Thoughts About Fishing
Golden Drops of Bare Truths
Albert Schweitzer
"Twice in the company of other boys, I went fishing with a rod. But then my horror at the mistreatment of the impaled worms, and at the tearing of the mouths of the fishes when they were caught, made it impossible for me to continue. Indeed, I even found the courage to dissuade others from fishing!"
Unknown
"Fishing/Hunting... a sport???!!! With hooks and hunting knives these gentle creatures - whales/other marine mammals - are torn and sliced alive amid cheering and laughing crowds! Animals' bloody tears attest to the final brutality of man!"
Unknown
"Fishing rod: A stick with a hook and worm on one end, and a fool on the other."
Lord George Noel Gordon Byron
"[T]he art of angling [is] the cruelest, the coldest, and the stupidest of pretended sports."
Godofredo Stutzin, Esq.
"Fishing: Those who consider themselves kind yet practice fishing to calm their nerves, enjoy nature... how can they calmly watch the fish bite the bait/their palates getting perforated/ struggling to free themselves while more and more the iron hook buries in their flesh/desperately jumping/writhing in pain until finally...stillness, from exhaustion and pain, but conscious! The 'good fisherman' throws the victims into a bag where they slowly die of asphyxia! Or throws them back to the water where they die, also, a slow death from gangrene/loss of blood/etc.!!! The 'innocent' pleasure of fishing is not different from the satisfaction Roman Emperors had from organizing/ enjoying watching bleeding men and beasts in the coliseums!!!" (Cuando Los Animales Tenían Voz)
Mike Handley
"I took my 9 year-old son to the beach. A kid was torturing a frog and someone called the police who rescued it. When my son saw men fishing/throwing the fish into a bucket until dinner time or back to the sea bleeding/in pain, he asked me to call the sheriff. Youngsters say strange things, but there had to be a perfectly logical reason why torturing a frog for sport is considered cruel yet torturing a fish for sport is legal/even regarded uplifting/ wholesome. The library gave us clear/ concise information: 'Fish/ frogs/dogs and humans are all vertebrates whose nervous systems are quite akin regardless of brain size, especially when it comes to feeling pain. Fish's mouth parts are exceptionally nerve-rich; when caught and released are severely traumatized, often fatally. In deep-sea fishing, the animals' internal body parts rupture from dramatic pressure changes when yanked to the surface! Sport fishing is one of the cruelest forms of hunting! So how do I explain to my son that fishermen choose to unwind/bond/get close to nature by putting fish thru a living hell? I told him they didn't comprehend what they were doing as the truth was safely hidden at the library. TV's 'feel-good' commercials featuring fishing for the banks/ beers/cars/ insurance/phone companies, abound! Finally the endless images from the beach/TV/library changed us. We spent the afternoon scrawling giant anti-fishing messages in the sand! Now, my son and I have never felt closer. Consider it bonding!" (Daily News 11/97)
John Bryant
"There are three prerequisites for angling: a hook, a line, and a stinker." (Fettered Kingdoms)
Lord (George Gordon) Byron (1788-1824)
"This sentimental savage, whom it is a model to quote (amongst the novelists) to show their sympathy for innocent sports and old songs, teaches how to sew up frogs, and break their legs by way of experiment, in addition to the art of angling, the cruelest, the coldest, and the stupidest of pretended sports!" (Byron comments on his Notes)
PETA's Animal Times
"Fishing is NO fun for fish! Dr. Donald Broom, animal welfare advisor to the British government: 'The scientific literature is quite clear: Anatomically/physiologically and biologically, the pain system in fish is virtually the same as in birds and mammals. Fishing is in the same category as hunting.' Due to fishing, millions of birds/turtles/seals/bats and million other wildlife and their babies suffer debilitating injuries or slowly starve to death after swallowing fishhooks and/or other fishing paraphernalia, or become entangled in fishing line, all discarded by fishers."
Rorke Garfield
"The suffering inflicted upon this nation's birds and other animal life (by anglers) is nothing short of the worse kind of vandalism!" (National Animal Rescue Assn. Report, U.K.) Quoted in PETA's Animal Times
Norwalk News-Trader
"Starfish get captured and murdered as 'preventative maintenance' because they eat clams/oysters which businesses rather sell. They dredge the starfish from the bottom with gigantic mops in which they get them entangled and are then dunked in a huge vat of 200oF boiling water, and tossed overboard!"
Unknown
"Fishing. Not only tortures/murders the poor caught fish, but fishers' carelessly discarded plastic fishing lines continue to hurt/murder birds/seals/sea turtles/bats/other. Plastic line is very strong/durable so it's nearly impossible to break free - they strangle, drown, or starve. Some birds use old fishing line in their nests, creating death traps for their young! Sea turtles eat plastic bags which they mistake for jellyfish and suffer internal injuries!" (Each time an animal is abused, innumerable other animals suffer too as a result! Adela P.)
GOLDEN DROPS OF BARE TRUTHS collected by Adela Pisarevsky
![Dead fish [ 25.88 Kb ]](/data/image_2_890.jpg "Dead fish [ 25.88 Kb ]")
![Source: www.animalphotolibrary.com - Orca [ 40.68 Kb ]](/data/image_2_2428.jpg "Source: www.animalphotolibrary.com - Orca [ 40.68 Kb ]")
