Podcast Transcript
Hope
Welcome to the Hope for the Animals podcast, sponsored by United Poultry Concerns. I’m your host, Hope Bohanec, and you can find all our episodes by going to our website, Hope For The Animals Podcast .org.
Today is all about fishes. I will be interviewing the president of the first organization focused on fish advocacy, Mary Finelli of Fish Feel. It’s really interesting to have the perspective of 30 years of animal advocacy that I do, and to see the evolution that we have gone through and that we are going through. Our culture is inherently speciesist, and even in animal rights, of all places, there has been speciesist tendencies over the years. Speciesism, of course, is the false belief that one species is dominant over the other, or has more importance than another. Back in the early days of the movement, in the 1980s when it came to farmed animals, the focus was on cows and pigs. Pretty much cows and pigs only, and hardly anyone talked about the chickens, who were overwhelmingly killed and way higher numbers than the cows and pigs. Karen Davis put in motion the ideas that would change that, she founded United Poultry Concerns. UPC is this podcast’s sponsoring organization, and she founded UPC in 1990. UPC is dedicated to chickens and other birds in food production and all forms of exploitation, and it raised the awareness that chickens were being ignored. Fast forward to today, and chickens have really taken their rightful place among the other farmed animals as being worthy of our respect and protection, at least in the animal rights movement. We still have a long way to go with the general public, but it is widely talked about now, in the animal rights movement, that we should put chickens to the forefront because they are killed in such massive numbers, and they are 98% of the land animals killed for food.
Now, notice that I said land animals. That caveat is there because the number of fish killed each year far outnumbers even chickens. In fact, there are more fish killed each year than the number of humans who have ever existed on Earth. It’s staggering. But if you look at vegan literature or vegan education websites, fish are often absent. We don’t see them, we don’t talk about them. Our speciesist worldview has left them out of the conversation. When they are talked about it’s generally in the context of how fishing is impacting the oceans. I’ve been to so many vegan talks over the years and so often the only time fish are mentioned, is in the context of the environmental piece, when we’re talking about the environment and the impact on the oceans and that’s, of course, incredibly important. But what about the fish? The individuals, fascinating beautiful fishes? But things are changing, and just in the last five years there’s been a lot of energy focused on fish. It’s running parallel to this wave of scientific information that’s coming out about fish and the complexity of their lives. Now, advocacy organizations are acknowledging that we need to bring fish more into the spotlight. There’s now dozens of Facebook groups focused on fish advocacy, there’s full organizations, Fish Feel being the first, but now there are a few more that have formed.
Mary of Fish Feel is a wealth of information on fishes and I do want to get to the interview soon, but first I want to tell you a true story. It’s my favorite fish story from Jonathan Balcombe’s wonderful book, What a Fish Knows, and it’s about two goldfish, Blackie and Big Red. Blackie and Big Red are two goldfish. Blackie was a small black goldfish and had been born a little wonky. He could barely swim, he kind of just bounced around the bottom of the tank. Blackie had a buddy in the tank, and that was Big Red. Big Red was a larger kind of a reddish orange goldfish. When it was mealtime and food was placed at the top of the tank, Big Red would swim down and scoop Blackie up onto his back, and he’d swim up to the top where the food was and he would let Blackie eat his fill of food. Then, when Blackie was full, Big Red would gently put him down back at the bottom of the tank and then Big Red would go and eat. I love this story because of what’s going on here. Big Red is showing so much emotion here. He is showing compassion and kindness, friendship, empathy, caretaking, selflessness, generosity. Are these attributes you would have ever thought of for a fish? Probably not. But now you know Blackie and Big Red’s story. So if Big Red and Blackie are compassionate and conscious, how can we cause the suffering and death of trillions of sentient, self aware, individuals? Let’s learn more from Mary.
Hope:
I want to bring in our guest. Today we have Mary Finelli and she is the founder and president of Fish Feel, the first organization focusing on promoting the recognition of fish as sentient beings deserving of respect and compassion. Mary also chairs the Save the Rays Coalition. She has a Bachelor’s of Science in Animal Science and has been active in animal rights advocacy since the mid 1980s. Mary produced Farmed Animal Watch, a weekly online news digest sponsored by numerous animal protection organizations, and she now focuses on fishes. Welcome to the podcast, Mary.
Mary:
Thank you so much for having me, Hope.
Hope:
It’s great to talk to you. Mary and I get to see each other at least once a year at the National Animal Rights Conference, usually when she’s tabeling for Fish Feel and I am for United Poultry Concerns, but last year 2020, we of course didn’t see each other because there was no conference, and that was sad and so I miss you. But it’s great to talk to you.
Mary:
Great to talk with you too.
Hope:
Let’s start with you. You’ve been vegan and in the animal advocacy space for a very long time, since the 80s. What’s your vegan origin story? When and why did you go vegan? What got you into activism? What’s your story?
Mary:
I’ve always been crazy about animals all my life, just fascinated for as long as I can remember. I was always so enamored with animals. I was always interested in vegetarianism, but I didn’t know anyone who was vegetarian. When I was in high school I read a biography of Mahatma Gandhi, and I figured, if he can do it, I can do it. So I did, I actually gave up all other meat except as you’d have it, fish. It was one animal I kept eating, and I actually ate more fish then because it wasn’t eating the other animals. It wasn’t until I read Diet for a Small America, and then I went vegetarian, and I was vegetarian for about 10 years. At that time, that was in the mid 70s, there was no such thing as animal rights, at least I never heard the concept. In the mid 80s I read about PETA taking over a laboratory in Maryland, and it was the first I heard of any such thing as that. I was amazed that there was such a thing. I wrote to them, and they sent me a copy of Animal Liberation which I read. It was like all your nightmares come true. Even after that I still wasn’t vegan, but I moved to Washington DC because I wanted to get involved in animal rights, that seems to be where all the so many organizations were headquartered. I moved to Washington DC and got involved with Peter, and a few other organizations and then quickly became vegan.
Hope:
Now you are focusing on fish. I want to start by dispelling some of the myths. Fish, of course, do feel pain and they have a complex emotion. This is all been scientifically documented and confirmed. Tell us what you’ve learned about fish by studying and focusing on them, and around pain and fear and emotion and all these things that most people don’t think fish experience, but now we’re learning and we know that they do.
Mary:
Yes, initially when I started the organization, I knew very little about them myself. I realized that they were by far the largest number of animals being harmfully exploited and receiving the least attention, even from the animal protection community, and suffering some of the worst abuses. I remembered Henry Spiro was always saying that we should try to go for the largest number, helping as many animals as possible, which certainly makes sense. He was really pushing the animal protection community to help farmed animals who were not being given much attention at all. For years and years, I worked primarily focusing on farmed animal issues. Even though it was touching on fish, fish farming and other fish issues, I was oblivious I guess. It didn’t really hit me until I realized that, here we were ignoring them. There was no good reason whatsoever to be ignoring them, especially when so many fish issues touch on other animal issues, so I thought, well, somebody should start the organization. I had been on for about two years and then I started it, and I just wish I had started earlier.
Once I got started, I started reading as much as I could about them and learning as much as I could, and every day I’m learning more and more about just how amazing and fascinating and admirable they are. A big way to easily learn a lot about them in a short period is Jonathan Balcombe’s book, What a Fish Knows. It’s really a treasury of information that’s a great way to really come up to speed on a lot of the issues. Every day, I go through the news and I post articles of interest, actionable items, and all sorts of things on our Facebook page. Every day, I’m learning more and more about them and what amazing beings they are.
Hope:
You mentioned that you started the first organization focused on fish, Fish Feel. When did you start this organization? You kind of touched on why, but can you expand a little bit on why you think it’s important to focus on fish?
Mary:
We started in 2013. I had been working in the farmed animal field, dealing with farmed animal issues, but even there, even though they constitute the largest group of farmed animals, they still were being given so little attention. I thought of where they really needed to be, their issues publicized and more attention brought to them. So I started the organization, and tried to promote fish issues as much as possible, go to different outreach events, and try to get other animal protection organizations to increase their advocacy for fishes.
Hope:
It is amazing how we’re focused on food animals, but we hear so little about fish, and they are caught in the largest numbers. I mean, they are killed the most, in the trillions. I want to talk about wild caught fish first. How are fish caught and killed in the ocean?
Mary:
There are primarily three main ways of commercial fishing, and one is netting. They have these huge nets and they put them out in the ocean. Giant nets, and when the bring it back up, whoever happens to be there is caught. Fishing in general is very indiscriminate by its own nature. They haul up this huge catch of fish, and then they keep whatever their intended target is, and throw back the ones that are dying, or they’re not interested in keeping, or if they’ve met their quota and they’re not allowed to catch any more. They’ll throw them back dead and dying, and it’s been estimated that 40% of the global catch is bycatch or bykill. It’s huge numbers of fish and other animals being caught and killed.
Another way is long lining, where they have long, long lines that they’ve put out along the surface of the water with thousands of hooks. Again, very indiscriminately catching whoever happens to come along and killing them. Another way is gillnets, where they have long, long nets vertically in the water, and again, catching whoever happens to come by. It’s massive killing, and so much of it is unintended killing. Animals that they’re not going to use and they’re not really trying to catch, and they throw them back, dead and dying. It desertifies the oceans, wiping out aquatic animals. Another way is trawling, where they have these nets that they drag along the bottom of the ocean, catching whoever’s down there, and also destroying coral and other habitat.
Hope:
Kind of like clear cutting the ocean floors.
Mary:
Yes, precisely.
Hope:
I want to go back to the question of do fish feel pain and fear and emotion, because being caught in these nets has got to be so scary, and a horrible experience. The way they’re killed, when they’re caught in the nets, they’re hauled up. How do they die?
Mary:
It must be absolutely terrifying. When they’re doing that, holding them up, a lot of them get crushed from the weight of the other animals on top of them. Or if they’re deep fishing, they’ll pull them up and the pressure change is so great that these animals basically implode and their organs will come out of their bodies. If any that come to the top are surviving, they’re suffocating. The way they kill them is extremely inhumane. They’ll either like gut them alive, or put them on ice and slowly let them suffocate, which prolongs their suffering. Some of these ships are huge trawlers that can process right on the ship, so they’ll catch the fish and process them right there. They have freezers so they can freeze them. They can actually be at sea for months or possibly a year or even longer, because they have supply ships coming in, bringing them supplies and taking the catch back. The ships can be out there for a long, long time continually killing.
Hope:
I want to go back to a point you made about the decompression of fish, just to kind of clarify. Fish have a bladder that fills and decreases as they go up and down for buoyancy, right? If they’re pulled up quickly, against their will, the bladder can erupt and come out of their bodies, or erupt their organs, and it’s a horrible, horrible way to die. It’s a painful thing to happen, having this decompression of their bodies and these bladders exploding inside them.
Mary:
It’s called barotrauma.
Hope:
Horrible, and I know that there’s been studies about that, and what happens to the fish. It’s a gruesome list of injuries and horrible things that happen from that.
Mary:
Right. If you go onto Google Images and search for barotrauma, you can see photographs of how horrific it is.
Hope:
Baro- and how do you spell that?
Mary:
B-A-R-O-trauma, it’s all one word.
Hope:
Okay. Also, just to touch on, you mentioned how the ships can stay out at sea for months at a time. The fishing industry is notorious for slavery as well, and for keeping people, forcing people to stay on the ships to work with no pay. That is a horrible thing that happens in the industry as well, right?
Mary:
Yes, the fishing industry has proved pretty notorious for human slavery. Again, since you should be out there for a long time, they basically trick people into going out when they have no idea what they’re really signing up for. They go out there and then they’re largely at the mercy of these captains. The Associated Press did an investigation a couple of years ago, and they actually won the Pulitzer Prize for the investigation, I think it was in 2016. They saw that some of these ships, if they were to go back to port, they actually took these men and boys to a remote island and put them in cages, until they came back, so it’s very literally slavery. A lot of the catch sold here and in other Western countries is basically untraceable. They sell it as pet food, or as human food. There’s an organization, Environmental Justice Project, and they’ve been following this for years and trying to expose these abuses. They have documented all kinds of horrific, physical abuse and rape and even murders. The New York Times did a series a few years ago that told just how horrendous it is.
Hope:
It’s terrible. Yet another good reason to not eat fish. If they have so little regard for human life, imagine how horrible they treat the fish, you know.
Mary:
Totally. If you eat seafood you may well be eating slave-caught seafood. It’s also in the shrimp industry, with the processing. They have documented extreme human rights abuses in the shrimp processing industry.
Hope:
Wow, awful. I want to ask you about farmed fish as well, aquaculture. This is really on the rise, now it’s a growing industry. Can you tell us what aquaculture is and how fish suffer on fish farms?
Mary:
Yes, it’s basically factory farming at sea, for the most part. They have these huge pens that they keep fishes confined in. They’re very crowded and given all kinds of antibiotics and other chemicals to try to keep them alive, because, of course, in these crowded, filthy conditions, disease runs rampant. In addition to fish feces, there’s uneaten food and all kinds of other pollution in these pens that they’re in. The fish are kept in such unnatural conditions, very stressful to them, so there can be aggressive fish, and the other fish really can’t get away from them, so there’s a lot of injuries. Sea lice is rampant in these facilities, which can also spread to wild fish. There’s documented deformities, and then the way they’re handled is very rough, and again, very inhumane slaughter methods. They’re exposed to all kinds of weather, and if there are bad storms, they can be killed by that. They are exposed to all kinds of pollution. If they have a red tide there’s no getting away from that, they cannot escape from these elements. Also, if they do get out, if the net gets cut or a storm destroys the pen, they can go out and compete with wild fish. It’s possible they might even interbreed with them, which would be problematic for the genetics of the wild fish. It’s factory farming of fishes, and there’s nothing humane about it. It’s also not helpful for consumers, because they’re eating all these fish that were treated with antibiotics, parasiticides, and all kinds of other chemicals. It’s a very cruel, unhelpful way to obtain food.
Hope:
I was able to visit a fish farm. I’ve been to a couple of fish farms, and this one in particular I remember, I was walking up and you see these tiny pens, I mean they’re maybe a little bigger than a big hot tub. As I was walking up it looked black, the water was like mud, it was so black. As you’re walking up you realize, the water is moving, there’s a lot of activity, and it’s because there’s so many fish packed in there and they’re on top of each other, in their own muck and waste. It was awful.
Mary:
Was that a land-based pen?
Hope:
No, they were connected to a large body of water. They were on the shore of a lake that was connected to the ocean. This was up in Oregon. You could tell the difference in the color of the water, because all the pens, the small pools that the fish were in, were kind of black and muddy, and then the body of water that it was right on was blue and clear. It was, ugh.
Mary:
They’ve shown that underneath these pens, they’ve totally destroyed the habitat underneath, whatever the environment is underneath, because of all this debris and pollution falling down there.
Hope:
We had a young woman on one of the podcasts recently that had done an undercover investigation of a salmon hatchery or salmon farm. She mentioned that there were a lot of deformities, and fish that were born connected and conjoined, and other deformities and illnesses. I wondered, I don’t know if you know, but why is that? Is that because of the breeding?
Mary:
I’m not sure. It could be the breeding, that they’re bred so intensively for select traits. It could also be the conditions they’re in. I’m not sure exactly why, but there are videos showing the deformities. There are spinal deformities, jaw deformities, and all kinds of deformities they can have.
Hope:
That’s what she was saying, spinal deformities and things like that. It was interesting because I doubt that there’s that high of a percentage of deformities in wild fish. It has something to do with the excessive, intensive breeding and confinement.
Mary:
Probably so, yes. With the factory farmed fish, they’re also killing animals because they don’t want them trying to get the fish by breaking into the pens. They’re shooting seals and birds, cormorants, out in the northwest. The government is hiring people to go out and shoot these beautiful cormorants, beautiful big seabirds and sea lions, in the UK the government gives them permission to shoot the seals. So if you’re buying farmed fish—and now they say about half of the fish people are eating are farmed fish—you’re also contributing to the killing of these other animals as well.
Hope:
Mary, can you talk about the sustainable labels that we see sometimes on fish? These certified labels from environmental organizations, and they’re primarily focused on environmental issues. I’m curious how accurate and truthful they are, and is welfare ever a consideration with these labels?
Mary:
Yes, you’re right, most of them do focus on environmental concerns. But what they’re really concerned about is conserving enough of these fish populations, so that they can continue exploiting them. That’s really the main concern.
Hope:
Right.
Mary:
Their standards are dubious, they’re constantly being challenged, and they’re allowing fisheries that are shown not to be sustainable. Given that it’s so difficult to accurately assess a population of wild animals, and the continual flux of the state of the oceans with climate change, ocean acidification, pollution, and other things that are affecting the state of the ocean, it’s so hard to accurately assess what the population of a wild species is.
As far as welfare, there’s very little attention to welfare for these fish. In the UK, there are standards, and the RSPCA does have a certification program for fish. But there was recently an investigation of rainbow trout farming in the UK, and they found all kinds of horrific treatment of these fish and problematic behavior by the employees. Fish are being kicked, stomped on, thrown, and treated in such cruel ways. One of the farms was featured on the cover of the RSPCA’s guide to fish farm standards. It’s really a feel-good thing for consumers to think that they can responsibly consume fish or other animals, and as you know, Hope, since you’ve written a book on this, there’s really no humane way to raise and to commodify animals. Any time you’re commodifying sentient beings, there’s going to be needless animal suffering and death.
Hope:
I’m curious how you feel about the killing and eating of crustaceans, like shrimp and lobsters and crabs, and also mussels and oysters and clams. This is, of course, a gray area for some people. They’re not technically fish. How do you feel about killing and eating this other marine life?
Mary:
They are animals, and unlike plants, they do have a nervous system. They might have a basic nervous system, but they do have a nervous system, and they respond to distressing and painful stimuli. There’s compelling scientific evidence that they are sentient, and they deserve any benefit of the doubt anyone might have that they are sentient. We don’t need to eat them. All of the nutrients derived from animals can easily be obtained from plant sources, more healthfully, more humanely, and more environmentally responsibly, so we don’t need to be eating them.
They’re also a food source for other animals. For example, here in Maryland, the oyster population has been going down. It’s at about 1% of its historic level, and that’s because of pollution, and also over-collection for human consumption, and disease. Because it’s been going down there and they want to continue collecting them, they’re trying to fight against standards that would put limits on that collection ability, so they’re also scapegoating other animals including cownose rays. Here in Maryland, they were having tournaments to kill these rays, which are like little manta rays that come up and stay mostly on the surface of the water so they’re easy target. They were having these bowfishing contests where they would go out and shoot them with an arrow, haul them up, beat them with a metal rod, and throw them in a barrel to suffocate. They would have a contest and give money to whoever got the heaviest rays. They were blaming the rays for the oyster population crashing, but science showed that the oysters make a very tiny fraction of the ray’s diet, and the rays are one of the most vulnerable fish to overfishing because they don’t reproduce until they’re older, and they only have one pup per year, so they’re very vulnerable to overfishing. They were going out there and having a heyday, shooting these rays just for fun and saying they were doing a public service because the rays were being blamed for the oyster population going down. Other animals are dependent on these animals. They’re having a hard enough time surviving as it is with pollution and climate change with the ocean. We don’t need to eat them.
Hope: That’s a great answer that I hadn’t really thought of, this is food for other animals that they need. They’re already facing so many issues with what we have caused with pollution and global warming, and we shouldn’t be taking their food as well. I do also like the benefit of the doubt argument. Basically these are animals. They are animals and they do have nervous systems, they can move, and we do need to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are sentient beings that deserve to live free from our manipulation and killing.
Mary:
Right. And they tend to be smaller animals so it takes a lot more of them to make a meal. You’re causing this many more animals to suffer. In regards to shrimp, in addition to humane concerns for the shrimp themselves, there’s also the bycatch issue. Trawling for shrimp has the highest bycatch rate. Along with the shrimp, you’re catching so many other animals and again throwing them back, dead or dying, into the water. Someone explained that if you were to show a representation of all the animals caught for a plateful of shrimp, that plate would have to be five feet wide, just to show all the other animals caught with them.
Hope:
What a waste.
Mary:
Totally.
Hope:
I want to talk about fish oil supplements because they’re really popular, people think they’re needing to get their omega-3 from the fish oil. I remember when I worked at a natural food store many years ago in the 90s, it was a vegetarian store. We didn’t sell any meat or fish, other than fish oil supplements. That was the exception because they were so popular and people were demanding them so much. I know this industry kills billions of fish, so can you talk about the fish oil industry?
Mary:
Yes, I believe it is the most popular dietary supplement, fish oil. The way they obtain it is they catch so many little fish, sardines, and anchovies, that type of little fish, primarily, and they process them into oil. Menhaden is another one. Such a huge number of fish is being used for this. Again, these are fish are basic food sources for so many other aquatic animals. They’ve shown that fish oil really is not beneficial for human health for the most part. There’s really very little benefit to it, and also it’s actually potentially hazardous because it can easily go rancid and if it does, it creates free radicals which are potentially carcinogenic. So not only is it not really helpful for us, it’s potentially very harmful. We can easily get omegas from plant sources. Walnuts are a good source, or flaxseeds, flaxseed oil, chia seeds, hemp seeds, or if you want a concentrated dose, you can get algae supplements, which is how fish get their omegas.
Hope:
Right, you can supplement with a plant source, with the algae and seaweed, marine sources of omegas that are not fish, that are plant based, right?
Mary:
Right, and then you don’t have the rancidity problems so much. Also, we won’t have contamination with mercury or dioxins or PCBs, or so many of these other contaminants that not only contaminate fish but also, of course, fish oil.
Hope:
Mary, I recently learned that sturgeons are farmed for their eggs for caviar. Caviar is fish eggs and I never had really thought about how they obtained those eggs. It really sounds similar to breeding chickens for their eggs. Can you talk about this industry, the caviar industry?
Mary:
Historically, it was done by catching wild surgeons. They would catch them, cut them open, take their eggs, and throw the fish back in to die, if they weren’t already dead. They did that to such an extent that they actually became endangered, so it became illegal to do that. Then they began farming sturgeon, which are a type of fish that takes a long time to come to maturity, to kill them and take their eggs. They have come up with another method now where they cut them open and do basically a Caesarian section, to take the eggs and sew the animal back up again, then try to keep them alive, but they’re very prone to infection and oftentimes they die. Or they are now doing this sort of thing called milking the sturgeon, where they give them a hormone injection to try to get the eggs to develop at a certain point. Then they will take them out of the water and push on their bellies to push the eggs out, which as you can imagine is extremely stressful, and no doubt painful to the fish, and also suffocating in the meantime. They tend to be large fish so there’s no way they can replicate the natural conditions for the fish. They’re kept in these little tanks, and even if they’re not killing them, they’re keeping them in these horrible conditions for years, and again it’s for a luxury product. Nobody needs to eat caviar. If you do eat caviar, there are vegan sources of it.
Hope:
You said there is vegan caviar?
Mary:
Yes, Ikea makes a very inexpensive brand of vegan caviar. There’s another one called Caviarn’t. There are actually a number of different vegan caviar brands. If you go to the Fish Feel website, we have a section on vegan seafood, and there are companies that sell vegan seafood including vegan caviar. Also, there are hundreds of recipes if you want to make your own, including recipes for vegan caviar.
Hope:
Wow, that’s fascinating, I had no idea, I love it. We’re seeing something really interesting happening in the animal advocacy movement now, and that is that people are engaging in fish rescue. There’s actually a fish rescue starting here in the Bay Area in California, where advocates are going into pet stores, and of course there’s always sick fish in the pet stores. Where they see fish that are not doing well, they’re asking the managers if they can take those fish home for free and let them recover and live their lives out. I’ve heard of them also getting fish from Craigslist, and where fish are being given away for free, like someone just wants to get rid of their tank and doesn’t want the fish anymore. People are rescuing them and letting them, recover, and this is a really interesting development in our movement. What do you think about this about fish rescue?
Mary:
I think it’s great, of course, I think it’s wonderful. There actually is a Facebook page called “vegans with fishes,” and they have a lot of great advice on there. People who have fish that need a home, or they’re looking for more fish to keep their other fish companions company. Pet Value just went out of business in the United States, and there was a real concerted effort to make sure that there weren’t any fish leftover that were going to be cruelly disposed of. I believe they were able to get all the fish out, and who were left they were able to obtain. It’s so much better. If people want to keep fish, of course we’re opposed to fish captivity, but there are so many fish who are in need of rescue who already exist.
The wild caught fish trade for the aquarium industry is so cruel, and wiping out a lot of fish populations, really decimating a lot of wild fish populations. There’s a new documentary called The Dark Hobby by Robert Whitner. He’s a fish advocate in Hawaii, and he’s put together a documentary showing how harmful that industry is, in addition to commercial breeders of fishing. Again, anytime you’re commodifying animals, there’s going to be needless animal suffering and death. So many animals die in the industry for aquarium fishes. If you want to keep a fish and you can provide a decent home for them, the thing to do is to rescue a fish. Some animal shelters have fishes available for adoption. There are fish rescue groups, different types of beta fish, goldfish, Koi. It’s wonderful to provide an animal in need with a good home. If you want to keep fish and can provide a good home for them, that is the way to go about it.
Hope:
I’d always thought how wonderful it would be to have fish, but of course I didn’t want to buy fish. Now I’m considering connecting with some of these rescue groups to maybe take in a fish that has been rescued and needs a home, it sounds really cool. I think that would be a wonderful thing to do and I’m excited that this is happening. You mentioned a couple of things and I’ll put them in the show notes, but one was a film, what was it called again?
Mary:
The Dark Hobby.
Hope:
Okay, that’s great. We’ll get a link to that and put that in the show notes as well as the Facebook group that you mentioned. It’s really wonderful to see that there seems to be a swelling of interest and advocacy around fish, just in the last maybe five years or so, and I love seeing that. It’s such a great development, what do you what do you think about that?
Mary:
You’re right. I’m so glad to see it happening also. It’s actually happening more in Europe than here, it’s just starting to happen here but Europe is ahead of us on that. There’s an organization, World Day for the End of Fishing. It’s held in March and they have events all across the world, I think 81 countries were involved last year. They have outreach events, video presentations, lectures, and all kinds of ways to try to get across to the public that fishing is cruel and unnecessary. A lot of animal protection organizations are beginning to advocate for fishes, which is wonderful. Even in popular media, Finding Nemo was a movie that had the slogan come from it was “fish are friends, not food.” Hopefully, that has had a good effect on a lot of children and adults who have seen that. There’s also a PBS show, Splashing Bubbles, which is a great children’s show with factual information about fish presented in a kid friendly manner.
There have been so many scientific studies, research, and information coming out in the last decade or two, showing that fish are sentient, that they do feel pain and fear and they can suffer. As with any other sentient beings they are deserving of our respect and compassion. With all these wonderful vegan seafood options that are available, there are so many companies that are coming out with vegan seafood products that are already available, and more and more coming out all the time. Hopefully cell based seafood will replace a lot of the fish and other animals used for pet food, and for human food. There are vegan seafood cookbooks, anything you have hunger for, there’s a vegan version of that that’s better for us, it’s better for the other animals, it’s better for the environment, it really just makes sense.
There’s now a big push for fish welfare, which is good, that there are some standards being set so that not just anything goes, or not anything is considered acceptable. At the same time, I am concerned about the interest in fish welfare overshadowing abolition, because again, there’s really no humane way to use animals for food. While I’m glad to see the interest in fish welfare, I am concerned that we keep the goal of getting people to stop eating fish and stop fishing.
Something that really concerns me are these huge fishing contests. There’s such a push now to get children and also women, encouraging anybody they can to go fishing. They have these so-called fishing rodeos, where they try to get kids to come to these tournaments, and they give them free equipment to use and prizes, trying to encourage them to torture and kill fish. That’s what you’re doing when you’re fishing, you’re torturing and killing fish. Even if you throw them back, it doesn’t mean they’re going to survive the injury of being impaled, hauled through the water, suffocated, manhandled, and thrown back in the water. Just because they swim away doesn’t mean they’re going to survive. They can linger in agony for days or weeks and they do die from that. Teaching people that it’s okay to torture and kill animals for fun is so antithetical to animal rights. I think we really need to have a concerted effort against this. It’s so widespread, like ice fishing now is so popular. With the pandemic, a lot of people consider fishing a way to go out and be by yourself, and have a good time, but you’re having a good time at the expense of somebody else and that’s never ethical to do. We have a book, An Underwater Friend, about a boy who goes fishing with his father and comes to realize how cruel it is, and he befriends a fish. We have coloring books and fact sheets and all sorts of things. We really want to make a big push to not only get people to stop eating fish, but to let the public realize that fish feel, they are sentient beings, they deserve respect and compassion, and fishing is animal abuse.
Hope:
Mary, I ask all my guests this and I want to ask you, what gives you hope for the future?
Mary:
First of all, I’m so glad I was born in the era of animal rights. When I was a kid, there was no such thing as far as I knew of, about animal rights. I was so delighted to find an animal rights community, and I’m so glad to see how it’s growing. I’m so glad that animals are getting as much attention as they are getting. As far as fish go, I’m so glad that they’re finally getting attention. To me, it’s sort of like chickens, how they were maybe 25 years ago and nobody really paid much attention at all to chickens. I think when Karen went to start United Poultry Concerns, she was actually discouraged from doing so because nobody was going to care about chickens. But it’s up to us as advocates to make people care. And attention now is being raised for fish. They’re sort of where chickens were 25 years ago, they’re just starting to come into the spotlight now, and there’s so much great science backing us up that fish are sentient, that they do feel fear and pain. So we have so much great information on our side.
There seems to be such an interest even in the public. We’ve gotten a very good reception for Fish Feel. I think when you bring this to people’s attention, good-hearted people are going to care. It’s really up to us to get them to care. Vegan seafood is increasingly popular. Restaurants are selling it, and some restaurants exclusively sell vegan seafood. For example, Beyond Sushi up in New York has a number of different restaurants. It’s commercially available as well, a lot of companies are making it available now, more and more coming out all the time, and there’s millions of dollars being invested in vegan seafood development. Hopefully, a lot of pet food will be replaced now, instead of using fish and other animals. There are vegan seafood cookbooks and recipes, on our website we have hundreds of recipes and links to companies that sell vegan seafood. There’s been a general increase in awareness and concern for fishes, so I am hopeful that things are improving for fish, and they’re finally beginning to get the attention and concern and respect that they deserve.
Hope:
It’s wonderful to see. Do you have a favorite seafood, a fish-free seafood food that you like, that you could recommend?
Mary:
You mean commercial?
Hope:
Something that you would get at the store or in the frozen department.
Mary:
I don’t like to pick favorites because I like them all to do well, but what seems to be so popular and so widely available are Gardein fish filets. They also make mini crabless cakes, and if you serve them with cocktail sauce or vegan tartar sauce, lemon, or what you would ordinarily serve fish with, it’s so similar to the flavors that you’re looking for. Anything you have a hankering for, there’s a vegan version, and become so easily replicated in flavors and textures, you’re really missing nothing but the cruelty.
Hope:
Mary, thank you so much for being on the podcast. It’s been really wonderful and so informative, and I appreciate what you’re doing for the fishes, thank you so much.
Mary:
Thank you, Hope. There are so many issues affecting fishes and you have two episodes in your series that are fantastic. I would really refer people to listen to those as well because you’ve covered it so beautifully, you really do.
Hope:
Thank you. I’ll put a link in the show notes to those two podcasts. Thank you, Mary.
Mary:
Thank you, Hope.
Hope:
Thank you for listening to the Hope for the Animals podcast. If you’re new to the podcast, welcome, and I hope you’ll add us to your listening library. If you’ve been tuning in for a while, thank you, and I would so appreciate it if you would go to Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, and give us a five star rating, and maybe write a review. That helps us to get our compassionate message to even more people. There’s a lot of great resources in the show notes, more info on fish. If you want to hear more from me on fish, please listen to my double feature on fish in the “reason for vegan” series that Mary mentioned at the end of the interview. I have links to those podcasts in the show notes. And be sure to check out Fish Feel’s website, they have a wealth of information there. Let’s educate ourselves and tell others about the massive massacre that’s happening in our oceans to feeling, thinking, innocent, individual beings. The marine life of our world. Please don’t eat seafood, and live vegan.
