thank you for the thoughtful response.
it is my belief that the biggest risk to all vertebrate species is human detachment from the natural world. having no idea where your food comes from and not being part of the process of gathering it. metaphorically speaking… never feeling a tug at the end of the line. never realizing there is any connection at all.
I feel like this has strayed off topic a little into the general ethics of fishing. I have nothing against fishing for food, even though some amount of suffering on the part of the fish is inevitable. What I do take issue with is the “let’s snap a photo” mentality while inflicting suffering on an animal.
Holding a fish up in the air by a hook through it’s mouth is the equivalent of holding a mammal underwater by a hook through it’s mouth. Prelonging that suffering by even a second just to get a photo is extremely cruel. Worse, some anglers will hold a thrashing fish up for a long time, waiting for it to stop struggling and hang still for a photo. This is cruel to fish that are about to be killed, but particularly dangerous to fish that are intended to be released since it depletes their oxygen and often enlarges the hole made by the hook.
If anglers want to post their catch on iNat, fish intended for the dinner table could at least be photographed after they are killed and no longer suffering. And fish intended for release could at least be photographed in the hand rather than hanging from a hook (some already do this.) It’s still not ideal because of the extra time it keeps them out of the water, but at least it shows some respect, and as long as it’s a single quick photo the harm should be minimal.
It’s a good point, but I guess you are all vegan… because these photos are nothing compared to what happens in the fish industry.
Most animal-based food involves similar situations in fact (or worse, it happens at an industrial scale, and animals often suffer much longer) so it’s not pretty!
And at this point in history, humans and livestock now make up 95% of the world’s mammal biomass! also 95% of all land vertebrates… it means that all wild deer, elephants, lions, bears, whatever wild species you can think of, are only a tiny fraction of all cattle, chickens, sheep, etc.!
This is the real issue for conservation, while suffering is sadly part of nature (they have to eat other species, and no medicine when they get hurt, etc.) demographics are totally inversed compared to what they were a few decades ago, and 8+ billion of people and their cities, infrastructures and agricultural land, take more place everyday, replacing natural habitats… world’s population is still rising as fast as ever (lower growth rates, but applied to a much larger sum!)
I was looking at ferrets observations in Europe recently, and most of them were roadkill… like 70%.
Here is another sign of this situation, a project called Bugs Matter: “The international citizen science survey of ‘bug splats’ on vehicle number plates to monitor flying insect abundance.”
All this might sound very dark, and it is dark, I mean you could find positive news, too… I’m mostly trying that sometimes you need to face reality if you want to make it better, and accept that just like with fish or ferrets, it’s becoming easier to spot/count some species that are dying, than those still alive…
What a wonderful posting. Thank you so very much, s-e, for summarising the situation, one which also badly depresses me. I noticed the lack of bugs on my windshield decades ago, though when I was younger, I had to stop every half hour to wash it. And your points give another reason why wild fish should be treated with respect. Because they are the only wild animals caught up in industry, and trillions of them are killed–crushed, suffocated, cut open alive–every year. That is why I started this post–I have spent years observing their fascinating behaviour underwater and the bias against them is so unwarranted. They are generally treated as if they are as sensitive as logs.
When we know that an animal suffers (and that includes at least all vertebrates and many invertebrates), the least we can do is try to minimise their suffering when we can.
Taking pictures of fishes in local fish markets could provide information about the species found off-shore. I started doing that to find out what sharks were being fished here, but have started photographing the fish too.
Are you talking about fish that are being handled specifically for the purpose of observing them on iNaturalist? Or are these fish that would have been handled (captured, possibly killed) anyway? These strike me as two very different scenarios, ethically speaking.
My original thread was about fish being handled for posting on iNaturalist, but this point is being made specifically in response to what Adam wrote: that iNaturalist doesn’t have enough photos to document the fish species that are left. Here, at the fish market, are sold the fish caught off shore. I don’t like it but at least I can see what species are there. A variety of species, fish and inverts, are caught by trawlers, and the sharks are caught by men in small boats who motor straight out from coast for many hours, and catch the sharks using fishing gear. They are small scale fishers. (They catch mostly threshers and blues.) It’s a matter of taking the time to see what is there and post the photos on iNaturalist to help fill in this gap. Because as the years pass I am seeing less and less biodiversity in that local market. Adam had mentioned going to fishing tournaments to document the fish who are caught, but I couldn’t handle that, since it is very much a ‘sports’ event. You are right that these are very different scenarios, ethically speaking. However, there is nothing I can do to stop fishing, so documenting the dead ones for iNaturalist is not being unethical, and at least it is small scale fishing for people who eat every bit and are not already eating too much protein.
Really interesting conversation here. I absolutely agree with you IlaFrance that there are a lot of people out there who unfortunately have a harder time humanizing animals that are so different from we as humans. One thing I would like to add though, is that experiences with nature is also what I believe is going to help us the most in moving towards humanizing and otherwise drawing attention to the importance of fish or other creatures that are often far away from humans on the tree of life. Summarizing the famous words of David Attenborough, no experience leads to no understanding, and no understanding leads to no protection. One of the great things about iNat is that it has the ability to engage, educate, and promote experiencing and understanding the nature around us. The fact that people who may be misinformed about proper fish handling are interacting with iNat at all is IMO already a step in the right direction. With continued engagement and maybe a little bit of positive communication, iNat brings a really good opportunity to help those people with a deep love of nature to share it with others that they are interacting with on the platform. Also, especially with fish as I work with them professionally as well, not everyone has the same accessibility to be able to experience and learn about them in the same way. For me personally, many of our aquatic environments can look like pea soup, so viewing fish in situ is essentially impossible, especially with enough clarity to be able to bring high quality, identifiable images to the platform. Look at any page of “Needs ID” fish and you will see a million photos of nondescript fish top-down in a plastic bucket. It can be really hard to draw useful data from that, IMO. Also, iNat is really good for meeting interested folk where they are. Maybe somebody needs to get interested in fish via a more accessible route like sharing their proud angling catch to iNat before discovering a passion and investing the time and money into learning, and being equipped for, doing noninvasive observations like you mentioned, which I can imagine may be at least somewhat costly as well. IMO Without angling to bring fish occurence data to the platform, and accessible experience with the aquatic natural world to people, we might not have much data at all. It’s certainly a trade off, as with a lot of environmental science, where physically manipulating any sort of living thing brings the chance to cause stress or harm to it. While we can’t always remove those stressors completely, having platforms that can amplify knowledge of proper techniques helps to mitigate cases like you describe. I love fish and it sounds like you do too. Keeping them around will require learning from them, and learning from them may not always be in the best interest of the fish’s feelings. I guess it may just come down to a matter of opinion on whether or not it is ethical to cause temporary stress or harm to certain animals for the purpose of learning and understanding them more thoroughly. :)
Yes, ethically speaking, I think one could reasonably argue that it is good to document those fish on iNaturalist. Since the harm is already done, you might perhaps mitigate it with some future benefit to the species, or at least bear witness that it was there. Thank you for what you are doing!
We have a tag for Ethics (which you could use here ? ) And also projects - 5 pages of them.
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/observed-with-care
almost 700K obs almost 32K sp and that is from only 42 observers.
I write for X-ray International Dive magazine, so will start figuring out an article to publish about how divers should post their pictures on iNaturalist. That way more of the photos will show fish in their own realm, rather than lying dead in the way most people already see them after fishermen have caught them. Divers are another group of people who love fish and who usually take photos of them, and might not know that their photos would be valuable to iNaturalist. I agree that the ultimate object is altering public opinion about fishes, as well as other life forms considered low and cold, and that is why I write about them.
Thank you so much, Diana, for this information.
Thank you, indeed, bearing witness that it was once there is the point–at least its passing was noticed.
You do have an interesting POV on this, and I respect that. These observations are very important to understand what is going on in our waterways! What are fishermen catching? Keeping? Releasing? What are they not catching anymore? What invasives are they catching, are there invasives in new places?
I disagree. While vegan or animal-rights ethical frameworks appear to inform much of this discussion, it is important to recognise that participants may approach these issues from a range of perspectives, including animal welfare, conservation, hunting, fishing, agriculture, Indigenous land management, recreation, and scientific research. No single ethical framework should be assumed to represent the views of the broader iNaturalist community. To remain inclusive and effective as a platform for nature engagement, iNaturalist should seek to accommodate this diversity of perspectives. Adopting or promoting a single ethical position risks narrowing the platform’s appeal and creating barriers to participation and engagement in different cultural, social, and environmental contexts.
I appreciate this point, and I agree that people on iNaturalist come from many different cultural, ethical, and practical perspectives. My intention was not to argue that everyone must adopt a single ethical framework, vegan or otherwise.
My original point was much simpler: as our scientific understanding evolves, our practices can evolve with it.
Over the last decades, research has increasingly shown that fishes are complex vertebrates with sophisticated nervous systems, cognition, stress responses, and the capacity to suffer. Given that growing body of evidence, it seems reasonable to ask whether unnecessary distress can sometimes be avoided — particularly in situations where the goal is observation and documentation rather than survival or subsistence.
Encouraging underwater photography by divers is one example. Such observations can contribute enormously to documenting biodiversity while also showing fishes in their natural environment and minimizing handling stress.
To me, this is not about imposing a single ideology. It is about allowing scientific understanding to inform how we interact with other living beings, and about reducing unnecessary harm when practical alternatives exist. This is, after all, a place where surely respect for the natural world is shared, no matter where we live or what we eat. That is why I started this discussion. I have a lot of experience with fish, their behaviour, and fishermen’s dogma and feel that this is one place where respect for nature should be basic.
As mentioned above in my reply to gregorysk, I have written an article about the dearth of photos of fish on iNaturalist and the importance of those taken by divers, inviting them to join and post their photos. This is the link to the article:
https://xray-mag.com/content/your-photos-fish-are-valuable-and-they
agree with you here Stephen. lots of variables and nuance to this conversation. from my perspective, any interaction between young people and the natural world should be the goal. we desperately need to preserve the diversity of approach for all participants.
a decent way to allow children to handle fish (even in areas without clear water)…
- cut a long branch off of some honeysuckle
- tie an 8’ length of mono to the end of the branch
- add a number 8 hook to the end of the line
- bait the hook with a tiny ball of white bread
- cast the line into the nearest creek
- you almost always will catch a creek chub that the kid will be excited about
- the only creeks where you can’t do this are too polluted by lawn treatment runoff
- handling the fish will make the kid less likely to want to treat their lawn when they have one.
total cost of the experience… $20… enough for 100 honeysuckle poles. and a bunch of hooks. too many current adults only experienced perfectly manicured lawn grass and never felt a tug at the end of the line.
Have you ever seen a fish underwater? Kids love to discover the aquatic realm, including freshwater pools. A mask and snorkel would provide much more pleasure and well-being than teaching them to use a stone-age tool to hurt, terrorise, and dominate a minnow.
I’ve made one observation of a dead bird that I definitely did not kill! I was walking to a geocache and saw a bird sitting there that didn’t move away as I got closer.