Oh, you're led to accept that, are you? On sea kittens and sea carrots

I recently read Peter Laufer's No Animals Were Harmed: The Controversial Line between Entertainment and Abuse (more about which later). I can't say I'd recommend it. It's impressionistic, and not in a good way - there are so many interesting paths he goes down...a few feet. Additionally, he begins the book talking about how he's a vegan and ends it no longer a vegan, but with no good reasons provided for either practice. He mentions thinkers who influenced his decision to become a vegan, but never engages with their arguments, and his rationales for eating meat are, frankly, creationist quality.

His "backsliding" begins with fish, and brings to mind PETA's "Sea Kittens" campaign. The campaign was widely mocked, and played dumbly and cartoonishly to emotions in lieu of making a rational-emotional case about ocean animals, which was entirely possible. But here's some of Laufer's "reasoning":

I've become a vegan backslider. I'm back to "vegish," and I made the change that day back in Florence. Since then I've chowed down on baked wild halibut and halibut burgers, roasted wild salmon and salmon burgers, baked Petrale sole, lox, smoked trout, and cans of Moroccan sardines for quick hits of protein (not to mention those trendy omega-3s). I'm still not completely comfortable eating fish, and not only because of the ghastly scenes in The Cove that are seared into my memory. I anthropomorphize the fish. But I've allowed Sheila's rationalizations, and others whose opinions I respect, to sway my routine. The fish, I'm led to accept, are not sentient. I'm starting to think of them as carrots. (KL 2496-2500; my emphasis)

Does any reasonable person think that halibut, salmon, sole, and trout are not sentient? That merely considering them sentient is anthropomorphizing them? That they're like carrots, or even that they're closer to carrots than to cats? There can be, and needs to be, an honest conversation about sentience and suffering amongst beings, human and nonhuman. If we're going to have this moral conversation, though, we can't allow ourselves to be led to accept claims that are fucking stupid.

Catch shares update

“Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he’ll starve.”

- bumper sticker, Gloucester, MA, 2011*

I posted briefly back in March about resistance to the implementation of catch share programs in the Eastern US. At the end of the month, the US Department of Commerce announced - belatedly and belittly - that several Northeastern fishing communities were in line for economic impact investigations and possible assistance (a coldly dispassionate, objective report from the Gloucester Times :)).

Then in April – just after Diane Wilson and other Gulf Coast fishermen and –women were blocked from entering a BP shareholder meeting – the bipartisan Jones Amendment passed, blocking federal funding for any new catch share programs for the rest of the current spending cycle.

On Tuesday, “Dan Rather Reports” (on something called HDNet) investigated NOAA’s relationship with local fisheries; the report should be available soon via iTunes.

Here’s an article on catch share programs and opposition from Food and Water Watch. I don’t have the expertise to evaluate it as critically as I’d like, and I have a krill’s knowledge of fisheries management, but I do know this: Long-term justice and sustainability are not going to be achieved by taking power and control away from local fishing communities.

* I enjoyed some of the other variants I came across here:

“Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.” - Author Unknown

“Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish.” - Author Unknown

Sites I like: health, politics, and fishing

HYDRA* is now up to almost 250 sites, and I’m enjoying finding new links from recommended sites and being reminded of resources about which I’d forgotten. Here are a few I’ve added recently – focusing on the corporate influence on health, rightwing politics, and sustainable local fisheries – that provide bountiful information and analysis:

Healthy Skepticism (see especially “What’s new?”)

Corporations and Health Watch

In addition to the mainstay Right Wing Watch, there is Political Research Associates, providing analysis of rightwing movements.

Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance: news and resources for sustainable fisheries rooted in fishing communities (including Community-Supported Fisheries)

* Once again, any suggestions for sites you’ve found to be good resources in your area of interest or expertise would be appreciated.

Fighting Catch Shares

This is one of those weeks when I suspect I’ll anger a diverse set of people.

…

So. On to it!

It appears oral arguments in the suit challenging Amendment 16 begin on Tuesday in US District Court in Boston. For some background, see here, here, and here. For a highly critical perspective on catch shares and related regulatory schemes, see here (if you want the NOAA/NMFS/BINGO/Pew spin, you can find that pretty much anywhere).

Mass Extinctions and How We Wrecked the Ocean

Over at Deltoid, Jeff Harvey just posted a link to this recent post at Climate Progress about mass extinctions and particularly the unprecedented devastation wrought on marine ecosystems in the past century. It contains a link to this 18-minute TED talk by Jeremy Jackson, “How we wrecked the ocean”:


A few contextual perspectives on the environment and fisheries: I’m currently reading J. R. McNeill’s Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World.



While a bit dated with regard to some of the major problems – published in 2000 – and, like many works, lacking sufficient attention to the oceans, it offers a startling overview of the distinctiveness and significance the past century’s environmental destruction and its actual and potential effects.

I also recommend David Dobbs’ The Great Gulf: Fishermen, Scientists, and the Struggle to Revive the World’s Greatest Fishery.



Finally, I’m just starting Decline of Fishes, Peter Anastas’ new novel (not yet on Amazon, but I believe it will be shortly) about the politics of “development” and fishing in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

I plan to have much more to say on the subject of the history of fisheries and the environment in the future, particularly my position that key to an effective approach is the appreciation and revival of local/indigenous traditions of marine resource use.

On a lighter note, I’ll leave off with my favorite line of the past few weeks (even with the mistaken “your”): “You know what else...deep-sea fish think your f’n ugly too!”