The First Rule of Fish Fight.

I’m having a bit of a struggle with Hugh FW’s Fish Fight.

The problem Hugh is trying to address is this:

Fishermen go out in boats to catch loads of fish at a time using large nets. Because this method is pretty indiscriminate (some of the more intense fishing companies use nets covering an area in the region of 4km) they catch many sea creatures that are not of the species they intend to land.

Some of these animals have been designated as ‘over-quota’ – cod famously so – and so the fishermen are not allowed to land them. So they throw them back into the water. Dead.

Sometimes hundreds at a time.

This seems like madness to all of us, I’m sure, carnivore, vegetarian and vegan alike. Sanna (an occasional carnivore) and I were watching Hugh’s Fish Fight last night.

“This is horrific,” I said. “Even meat-eaters will be by appalled by it.”
“Of course,” said Sanna. “It’s a horrible waste of food.”

And therein lies the rub, and the problem I have with supporting Fish Fight. I don’t see a waste of food, I see a waste of life. Yes, I believe it’s worse to kill an animal and throw it back into the sea than to kill it and eat it.

But Hugh’s preferred solution – that people should be encouraged to eat more fish from a wider range of species – I can’t support.

There were a couple of moments in the programme that showed the disconnect to which even people like Hugh, who has gone to the trouble of visiting fish farms and doing great work chasing companies like Evil Tesco, are prone.

In one he was talking to the owner of a salmon farm (did you know, btw, that the pink colour of salmon is an additive – canthaxanthin – which has been linked to retina problems) and asked him what the mortality rate of his salmon was.

“About 7%” responded the owner.

I blinked several times. What? So the other 93% live happy lives and die in old age? Of course not. What Hugh meant is “How many of your fish don’t survive long enough to be killed en masse in factory machines?”

In another, Hugh visited a factory where salmon are killed, opened and gutted by industrial machines, thousands at a time . It was incredibly bloody and the factory workers’ overalls, goggles and and hats were sprayed red and dripping. A stone of sadness formed in my stomach and sank, making my body feel heavy.

“Well, it’s certainly hard to argue with this from an animal welfare point of view.”

Hugh and I clearly have a different idea of what constitutes looking after the welfare of an animal.

It seems to me that the first rule of Fish Fight is that you must forget that fish are living animals, rather than ‘food resources’.

Me, I found the sight of so many animals being killed and torn apart very disturbing and it led to some very bad dreams.

And that, I’m afraid, is why, as the Dragons say, “I’m out.”

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