vladic ravich

consider the mort

EXAMINing THE LITERAL AND FIGURATIVE underbellies OF THE FISH-PAIN DEBATE

discussed: Five Black Chutes, Humanity’s Earliest Triumphs of Husbandry, Rotary Club Signage, A Strip-Mall Starbucks, A Decerebrate Cat, Sham Rage, The November 1874 Edition of Scientific American, The Human Urge for Narrative, Your Favorite Stuffed Animal, Scientists Rolling Their Eyes, Kafka

or a salmon in Can- through which blood is pumped out of ada, the fish harvest its body by a still-beating heart. The fish ends with a slippery are dead before coming to, and, silent as slide through one of loaves of bread, they push one another five black chutes. Half- into the freezer in the ship’s hold. Fway down, a piston squeezes out a puff The salmon harvest begins when an of exhaust as a pneumatic hammer strikes the fish on the “air stone” is put into the water at the front of the trough, back of the head at more than sixty miles per hour. The which is a huge pocket of netting where a few thousand salmon slides sideways onto the bleeding-table, its visible salmon are slowly being corralled. The air stone releases a eye unnaturally still. That’s how you know it’s stunned, ex- surge of bubbles that creates motion in the water, and the plains Jason Stalker, the harvest master for Marine Harvest, salmon turn to face it, riding the current. “You see, they’re a multinational aquaculture company in Campbell River, lined up good, like firewood,” Stalker points out. One by British Columbia, that slaughters thirty thousand fish ev- one, the fish are sucked through a tube and into the mini- ery day. Now the salmon is ready for a quick cut of the gills, van-sized SI~5 stunner bolted to the stern of a nearby ship.

19

Illustration by Tony Millionaire Above the water, Marine Harvest’s out anything unusual,” he said, ask- market. I’ve caught exactly one fish Thurlow Point fish farm is little more ing that I not include his name or in my life: watching it slap the waves than a grid of floating steel walkways. home state. “Just driving forklifts full with a frantic tail, I felt a rising strand A few strands of rope divide the water of Dumpsters of dead and dying fish, of anxiety as I reeled it in. What now? beneath them into ten soccer field– you really want to avoid that.” I held its slimy length long enough sized pens, and the only structure is a I have come to British Colum- to remove the hook and scrambled fish-feed warehouse. The salmon are bia to see what humane fish slaughter around for a rock to bludgeon it with. military-fatigue green, with phospho- looks like, but like a hundred phi- The aquaculture industry calls this rescent scales, black spots along their losophers before me, I cannot know “percussive stunning” and performs backs, and slick white bellies. Every exactly what the still-living morts lan- it with a machine or a black baton few minutes, a fish jumps across the guishing in the bucket feel, if anything. nicknamed “the priest.” It worked for surface of the water—there are half a In the moment, the answer seems ob- a few minutes, until the fish flipped a million of them between nets in this vious to me: what animal weighing fif- foot into the air, still shamelessly alive. stretch of ocean. teen pounds does not feel pain? We know almost nothing about The harvest must be highly cho- The skipper welcomes me with the life of a salmon before it lands reographed because calm fish yield a broad smile and a big hand. Con- on our plate. Fish have physical traits higher-quality flesh. Panic in the wa- verting his commercial fishing boat we cannot fathom: imagine a line of ter means bruising and a product that to work with aquaculture producers nerves around your body that can de- doesn’t last as long on the shelf. Un- was a simple business decision, but tect electricity and shifts in the move- til they’re stunned, the thick bodies of it also echoes humanity’s earliest tri- ment of water. From the perspective the salmon also pose a danger to the umphs of husbandry: he had shifted of a bipedal primate with only five workers. from catching fish in the wild to har- senses, the thirty-two thousand spe- For every fifteen or so stunned vesting them on a farm. cies of fish that make up the largest salmon, one emerges from the harvest Notepad in hand, I finally get to and most diverse group of vertebrates box still writhing, arching its body the question that has brought me are easier to describe by what they into a crescent and slamming its mus- here: is this stunner a more humane lack: no fur, no arms or legs, and not cular tail against the table. The fish- way to slaughter the fish? He paus- much of a face. farm workers spend the day grabbing es and looks at me, squinting, the these frantic exceptions and shoving bright December sun in his eyes. “It ow can anyone know them headfirst into a smaller manu- does make for better steaks,” he fi- “ a fish really suffers?” al stunner, which makes a sound like nally says. I can feel a caricature of H asked the fisher- a staple gun. A few get their gills cut myself being drafted in his mind. man who gave me a lift somewhere while still very much unstunned. The skipper has executed and sold along Highway 19. “I want to keep A few feet from the bleeding table, countless fish over the years, and like my life simple,” he continued, feed- I see a bucket of “morts”: fish either many of the estimated 200 million ing a cracker with cream cheese and dead or deemed unfit to remain with people in the world who make their salmon to the old beagle resting be- the living. A former fish-farm work- living from fisheries and aquacul- tween my feet on the passenger-seat er on the East Coast had told me how ture, he either does not believe the floor. crucial it is to remove the morts, as fish can suffer or is not troubled by With its netting-repair shop and they might spread parasites or disease the question. harbor tight with boats, Campbell to the entire stock—or, in the case of Growing up in New York City, River is a fish town. Located about open-ocean farming, beyond. “After I wasn’t exposed to fishing, or even to twenty miles south of the Thur- working through a few mass deaths, I live fish, unless they were in aquari- low Point fish farm, it is the home became more hard-line about culling ums or expiring outside a Chinatown base for much of the aquaculture

20 and recreational-fishing businesses to interview him on the ethics of his defenders of natural habitats can rely around Vancouver Island. Here the sport. I asked him directly: if a fish on an economic argument alongside Tyee (a local name for the Chinook were an eagle, would it be ethical to their spiritual one. Just as the ancient salmon) is as much a spiritual sym- hook him, play him until he was ex- inhabitants of this land both wor- bol of nature as it is a smiling car- hausted, and then drown him? “Fish shiped and slaughtered the delicious toon stenciled on storefronts—the aren’t eagles,” Maynard said. “Salmon Tyee, there remains today both a love streamlined fish consistently appears are tough critters. They’ve evolved to for fish and a certain lust for the sport on Rotary Club signs, totem poles, go over waterfalls.” of catching them. and T-shirts. Yet Jeremy Maynard trains his Gerry Blackmun didn’t care The first exhibit in the Campbell fishing guides in how to dispatch much if I quoted him. “Screw it,” he River Museum is a display of Na- their catch quickly. He does not use said. “I’m retired.” Gerry spent his tive American wide canoes, formida- stringers, a series of hooks that attach career at the Canadian Department ble clubs, knives, and great yawning to the face, lips, or gills and are mar- of Fisheries and Oceans and per- hooks the size and color of sausage— keted to “keep fish alive and easy to formed the environmental-impact all devoted to both killing and honor- count,” and that are banned in sever- study for the estuary that once ex- ing the enigmatic salmon. There’s an al Canadian provinces. isted under the strip-mall Starbucks entire wing honoring the fishing and In fishing, there are ethics and where I met him. “It’s just money canning industries. there is etiquette: “Without fighting talks and bullshit walks,” he said, re- Before the beginning of the the fish, there’s no recreation,” said ferring to one or all of the fish-related twentieth century, the fishing in- Maynard. “There’s no sport in that.” industries in town. He recalled how dustry involved little more than Pain or no pain, the salmon should commercial fishermen flouted their catching a meal, but as seine nets have a chance at escaping. “All to the quotas and how the fish farms pollut- crisscrossed the waters and loggers end that our brave Tyee may have a ed the waters. His friend runs a tour- cut into the cedar forests, the envi- fair fight” is the Tyee Club motto. ist fishing business in town. “He’s got ronment around the salmon became Maynard’s primary concern is three big boats—takes twelve hun- more industrial, and, in the process, with healthy populations, not the in- dred bucks for eight hours and every- people became nostalgic for what dividual experiences of fish. “Without one gets a photograph,” Gerry said. had been lost. Fishing transformed anglers, there’d be far less people tak- “He’s pimpin’ his passion.” I asked if from a way to get food into a recre- ing care of streams, lakes, and habitats he thought fish are capable of feeling ational industry. on a voluntary basis,” said Maynard. pain. “Who knows?” he said, gazing The Tyee Club of Campbell Riv- “None of that would take place.” out at the four-way stop. Then he de- er was formed in the mid 1920s Recreational fishing brought tour- scribed a tool he had made—a screw with the chartered purpose “To fos- ists to British Columbia, along with welded to an ax handle—to dispatch ter interest in Canada’s greatest game thousands of jobs and nearly a billion the fish he studied for the DFO. “Pop, fish… [and to] emphasize the ideals dollars in business. This ensures that right on the back of the head, dead in of sportsmanship as distinguished a s e c on d .” from slaughter.” Membership was But like almost everyone in limited to amateur anglers who had Campbell River, Gerry does not hes- caught a Tyee salmon weighing thir- itate when it comes to his passion for ty pounds or more on a light tackle. fishing: “I got people dying all around Jeremy Maynard, known locally me, bills to pay, I may not have a job as “the Ardent Angler” after the title next week, so yeah I go fishing—and of his newspaper column, was un- it’s paradise. I play ’em, torture ’em, derstandably skeptical when I asked don’t hear them screaming, all that

21 sorta stuff,” he said with a mischie- experiments, and other scientific flot- causes a physical response. Leeches, vous smile. “If I got problems in the sam make a convincing case that the worms, slugs, and fruit flies all dem- morning, I don’t have them at night. cerebral cortex plays a major role in onstrate nociception, but that does not It’s my church.” making us mammals feel like ourselves. mean they are capable of experiencing It is well documented that what these signals as pain. cientists cannot describe hurts one person may not bother an- While teleost (boned) fish have pain with the same preci- other, but this fact has been inter- nociception roughly similar to our S sion they apply to the anato- preted differently at different points own, some other aquatic animals my of hip-sockets or to nest-building in history. An article in the Novem- do not—nociceptors have not been behavior, to measuring electricity or ber 1874 edition of Scientific Amer- identified in sharks and rays. Perhaps to counting calories. We can no more ican ascribed this spectrum to class: they evolved an alternative method of quantify pain than we can measure self-preservation, or maybe they have joy or regret. For laymen, looking for It is well known that a savage will more to gain from recklessness than signs of pain in animals is a little like bear pain, not merely in absolute from caution. separating pornography from art: you stoicism, but apparently unmind- Pain serves varying essential evo- know it when you see it. fully, which if inflicted on a refined lutionary purposes and so is experi- What we define as “pain” actual- and cultivated individual would enced by species in different ways. If ly comprises two distinct events: the produce death or syncope…. Phy- a zebra fails to ignore a harmful sit- observable physical response (pull- sicians state that the sufferings of uation or stay off a bruised bone, it’s ing away, screaming, grimacing) and childbirth are as nothing to the not going to last long. However, or- the internal experience of anguish squaw or to the woman who con- ganisms as primitive as bacteria will and awareness. We usually refer to stantly performs coarse manual la- retreat from harmful chemicals— these two components operating bor, when compared with those of that does not mean they are active- in tandem. the delicate females of our upper ly suffering. Consider the cat—or, rather, the classes. The same general rule ap- Even Peter Singer, whose phil- decerebrate cat. With its cerebral cor- plies to the lower animals. osophical work aims to extend our tex removed, the animal responds to ethical awareness to include animals, stimuli with what scientists call “sham The authors proceeded to advise admits that oysters may not deserve rage.” The cat will continue to bite, against vivisections of pigs and even a blip on our ethical radar. They have claw, hiss, and even arch its back, but acknowledged that “there are many two nerve centers, do not move, do as far as we know, the cat is no longer who contemplate the sport of the an- not have a central nervous system, and aware of itself. A mammal without a gler with horror and who see, in the lack anything analogous to a brain. cerebral cortex is alive, but it is no lon- writhings of the worm on his hook or But Singer has no doubt that ger a sentient, conscious being. in the struggles of his finny victim, all fish feel pain: “Surely, it is only be- Consciousness, in this context, the tortures of human mutilation… cause fish do not yelp or whimper in does not imply a soul—it’s something Where then, at what particular class a way we can hear that otherwise de- that emerges from different areas of of being, is the dividing line to be cent people can think it a pleasant the brain interacting. Studying “the c- drawn?” Good question. way of spending an afternoon to sit word,” as one neuroscientist calls it In 1906, Charles Scott Sherrington by the water dangling a hook while in his presentation about the octopus conducted a series of experiments that previously caught fish die slowly be- brain, is always going to involve a phil- led him to separate the concept of pain side them.” osophical detour. No one has yet ful- from that of nociception, which refers Fish have nerves and spines and ly explained what the c-word really only to the presence of an electric sig- brains, but there is no consensus on is, but centuries of brain-injury cases, nal that travels through a nerve and whether they are capable of suffering.

22 In his far-ranging 1991 essay “Assess- appear, at the earliest, at twenty-four extensive memory, fine-motor con- ing Pain in Animals,” Patrick Bateson weeks. Others argue that a conscious trol, an unparalleled capacity for ab- writes that veterinarians trying to cre- experience of pain does not develop straction, and complex language. ate a framework for measuring pain in until much later. “Pain is always sub- Perhaps suffering is just a prod- animals “more or less give up in de- jective,” says the IASP footnote. “Each uct of the human urge for narrative. spair when they get to fish.” individual learns the application of When we look at art, for example, its The International Association for the word through experiences related effect relies on the experience of the the Study of Pain (IASP) defines pain to injury in early life.” viewer. How effortlessly we attribute as “an unpleasant sensory and emo- Human survival depends on the ecstasy to the painted gold eyes on a tional experience associated with ac- ability to live together. We read each rectangle of cloth or weave a plot into tual or potential tissue damage, or other for signs of pleasure and pain. nothing more than a progression of described in terms of such damage.” What’s the purpose of the excruci- musical chords. Remember your fa- Simple enough, but this widely cit- ating pain caused by a kidney stone vorite stuffed animal—didn’t you once ed definition is a sort of philosophi- lodged in the urethra, asks Bateson think it had the capacity to suffer? cal iceberg because it is followed by a in his essay. “Is a person writhing in In our minds, our lives unfold like footnote seven times its length. Pain, agony on their back more likely to the stories we read in novels or impose the footnote concludes, “is always a recover than somebody who feels on the constellations. This sense of nar- psychological state, even though we nothing?” Only if someone else reads rative, this desire to suss out meaning, may well appreciate that pain most his pain and remembers a cure. may be the essence of suffering. May- often has a proximate physical cause.” Consider the toddler who falls be this desire for narrative explains the In this light, consider the human onto his knees on the playground. difference between reacting to negative fetus. On the last day of March 2012 He looks for his parent’s gaze before stimuli and actually feeling pain. We the state of Georgia passed a law that bursting into tears. Bateson hypoth- recall how we felt before experiencing criminalized abortion after twen- esizes that human pain may have pain and reflect on its source and the ty weeks of pregnancy, based on the evolved as part of our inherited so- injustice of the situation. Without lan- claim that a human embryo has the cial skill set. The more we care for one guage, without theory of mind, without capacity to feel pain at this point. Ex- another, the more likely we are to keep self-awareness, without mirror neu- perts overwhelmingly disagree with our kin alive and pass these traits on rons and the rest of our unfathomably this cutoff, arguing that the neural to the next generation, just as the mis- complex neuro-knot, perhaps there re- pathways necessary for feeling pain erable narrator of Dostoevsky’s first ally is no suffering? novel, Notes from Underground, un- In the four-million-year-old fos- derstands that the moans of a person sil record of our closest ancestors, the afflicted with a toothache are a public hominid species, only human beings act: “He knows himself that he is do- and Neanderthals show evidence of ing himself no sort of good with his using symbolism, ornamentation, moans… The injured man cries out musical instruments, figurative/ab- for others to hear him.” stract representation, and performing That’s not to say that being a highly burials. No one knows if this aesthet- social species is the sole benchmark of ic sense is a distinct ability or a slid- mental complexity. If it was, ants and ing scale, but, left to their own devices, bees might be having a similar debate chimps don’t make cave drawings. about us. Instead, human self-aware- Of course, all of this might ness emerges from our unique brew strike you as nonsense. Equating the of mental abilities, which includes ability to experience suffering with

23 consciousness may be its own form hypotheses that did not require the in- published during the 1960s with the of anthropocentrism. Maybe a lack of terpretation and measurement of ani- word emotion in the title; there were self-awareness gives the pain a mo- mal feelings. Skinner did not deny the more than two thousand in the last nopoly over the senses? possibility that animals have feelings, decade. But even as he contributed his but he described their inner world own theories for this phenomenon, ith more than forty as a “black box” that was impossible LeDoux called for skepticism: “Re- years as a neuroscien- (and bad for your scientific career) to search on the neural basis of feelings W tist and a lifetime as explore. His research into basic psy- in humans is in its infancy. We will a fisherman, Dr. James Rose, a pro- chological concepts like reward and never know what an animal feels. But fessor emeritus at the University of punishment spawned an entire field if we can find neural correlates of con- Wyoming, has spent the last decade whose discoveries have been put to scious feelings in humans… and show spearheading the movement against use in everything from political cam- that similar correlates exist in homol- the increasingly popular notion that paigns to rehab programs. ogous brain regions in animals, then fish feel pain. Why should we apply Skinner’s dismissal of experi- some basis for speculating about an- human concepts of pain to fish, he ments into animal subjectivity has imal feelings and their nature would argues, when our understanding of fallen out of favor. After the “Cog- exist. While such speculations would their subjective experience is almost nitive Revolution” of the 1950s and be empirically based, they would nev- nonexistent? Rose—like almost ev- ’60s, the so-called behaviorists began ertheless remain speculations.” ery expert in the fish-pain debate— to lose ground to researchers who Rose worries that public percep- is weary of the press. As we drove to ignored Skinner’s methodology for tion has been swayed by an “irritat- a café near his home in Fort Collins, practical reasons (such as the study ing wasteland” of pop-science cable Colorado, he kept a hand on his close- of artificial intelligence), and to those shows and articles that depict ani- ly cropped white beard and chose his who were simply eager to dive head- mals as creatures that look different words carefully. first into the “black box” and design but share our particular range of feel- There was a time when an Ameri- experiments that could discern elu- ings. He calls this “trophy-hunting”: can scientist would feel about as com- sive traits like self-awareness. the ape that learned sign language, the fortable discussing suffering in fish as Many of the most creative con- rats that forgo chocolate when given debating whether fish have souls. This temporary experiments allow these the chance to open others’ cages, the attitude once dominated the study subjective interpretations to creep into parrot that can use language to pick of animal behavior and psychology. their vocabulary—or at least into their the right object. Then there are the Rose’s critics compare him to Bur- press releases. Studies get wide cover- weekly news stories about hero dogs rhus Frederic Skinner, the founder age for finding evidence of empathy in and painting elephants, not to men- and chief enforcer of the “behavior- rats when they’ve shown only “social tion the YouTube videos. ist” school of psychology. Skinner is mediation of pain sensitivity.” The an- Rose is proud to be “old-school” regarded as something of a bogey- thropocentric explanation is tempting: and thinks many contemporary in- man in the popular imagination for experiments claiming that animals terpretations show that caution has his obsession with learning to con- have empathy or envy or cunning get eroded. He does not claim animals trol behavior and experimenting on scientists attention and science report- are automatons, but he represents a animals. However, Skinner’s mission ers an angle. significant number of scientists who was actually to direct psychological “Emotion has happened,” wrote roll their eyes at the latest functional research toward experiments with New York University neuroscien- MRI study claiming to show that we measurable, tangible results. He be- tist Joseph LeDoux in a 2012 paper “love” our cell phones, or that animals lieved in ignoring the inner world for Cell magazine. Using PubMed, “befriend” one another. For these sci- of animals in order to test concrete he found about one hundred papers entists, these terms are misleading in

24 human subjects, and simply wrong three quarters of the human brain. a functional organization that is sur- when applied to animals. It is densely packed and has six lay- prisingly comparable to the mamma- When asked why, five years into ers that integrate with each other and lian isocortex.” his retirement, he continues to pub- the rest of the brain. This back-and- Dr. Naoyuki Yamamoto, a biol- lish papers that challenge the idea forth communication throughout ogist studying the neuroanatomy of that fish feel pain, Rose says he doesn’t and between layers is believed to con- fish at Nagoya University, in Japan, want future generations to stop fish- tribute to our moment-to-moment agrees that the forebrain of the fish is ing or restrict medical research using conception of reality—our conscious not “laminated”—which is to say in- fish. His fear that the next generation experience. terlinked in three dimensions—in the may avoid fishing is well founded. “The fish pallium, compared to same way as the mammalian neocor- Whether the cause is squeamish- the neocortex, contains far fewer dis- tex is, but this does not mean it cannot ness or video games, the internet or tinctive neuron types, neurons with function in a similar way. He readily the economy, many rural parts of the less structural complexity, far less-or- admits that his own hypothesis—that country have seen double-digit de- dered connections, less thickness, a the sensory-processing areas of the clines in hunting and fishing licens- paucity of internal connections, and fish brain correspond to the neocor- es in recent decades. no space for them, anyway,” Rose ex- tex—is not yet proven. Even though Animal-rights activists enthusi- plained. Mammals have far more “as- he disagrees with Rose’s assessment, astically encourage these trends—for sociation cortical areas” than fish. Yamamoto does not think the issue them, experiencing nature does not These are areas that do something is settled. “It may be frustrating,” said necessitate role-playing predator and other than control movement or Yamamoto, “but I think it is risky to prey. “Kayaking does not involve in- process sensory data. They are often make a conclusion with inadequate flicting unnecessary pain on animals,” assumed to be essential for abstract d at a .” said PETA spokesman Ryan Huling. thought. Without these areas, Rose Fish have been documented “[Rose’s] sentimentality of things like argues, fish lack the “cross-cortical building nests, recognizing other in- fishing is very representative of an integration” essential for conscious- dividual fish, and living in commu- older generation. PETA intentional- ness. For him, a fish is like a reference nities with social hierarchies. Some ly focuses our campaigns on remind- library full of books but with no li- species form monogamous relation- ing young people that animals have brarian present. From this perspec- ships; others learn from other fish; personality and should be respected.” tive, the question “Do fish suffer?” some remember scents for years; presents the same pitfalls as asking others use tools. Some even develop here is one difference be- “Do fish love their offspring?” or “Do specific traditions that vary among tween mammals and fish fish have a favorite hour of the day?” different schools of fish within a sin- T that pushes Rose beyond While they may have a vast range of gle species. skepticism: he argues that because emotions, they lack the neural inte- So how can fish accomplish these they do not have a neocortex, fish do gration to experience these emotions complex and cognitively demanding not meet the minimum operating re- as they occur. behaviors? Perhaps in the same way quirements for consciousness. Also Halfway around the world, a lab our bodies orchestrate our heart rate, called the isocortex, this outermost in Spain is making the opposite ar- breathing, hormones, and countless layer of the brain is associated with gument: “The fish pallium is far other processes: unconsciously. When many of the higher mental abilities [from] simple or undifferentiated,” we run for the bus, we are virtually of mammals. The prefix neo implies said Dr. Cosme Salas Garcia, a neu- unaware of the exquisite adjustments an additional, evolutionarily upgrad- roscientist at the University of Se- necessary to keep our balance. ed part of our anatomy. ville. “Conversely, it shows a high Say consciousness is like a The neocortex makes up nearly degree of complexity and it displays car, and the human neocortex is a

25 particular feature of this car, like a build the case that fish experience yank your finger away. The dull, throb- fuel injector. Bumper cars don’t have pain. Victoria Braithwaite, Michael bing, long-lasting pain is generated lat- fuel injectors but they’re still a kind Gentle, and Lynne Sneddon published er by the thinner, slower C fibers. of car. Or perhaps the neocortex is the results of three experiments that Sneddon found far fewer C fibers more like a car’ steering mechanism. moved the debate from obscure sci- than A-deltas in fish. While mammals Any vehicle without one is basically entific journals into headlines around have 60 to 80 percent C fibers (and a train on a track, not a vehicle you the world. 20 to 40 percent A-delta fibers), the can drive. For Rose, fish are a “large- They asked two questions. Do fish trout had only about 5 percent C fi- ly brain-stem-mediated organism.” have the neurological “hardware” to bers. While Braithwaite calls this a They can move as fast and far as oth- perceive pain? And if so, do fish be- “mystery,” Rose sees it as one of many er species, but there’s no one behind have like they are in pain? overlooked questions surrounding her the wheel. In her book Do Fish Feel Pain? experiment. One way to speculate on the Braithwaite describes how Sned- Humans born with congenital in- role of the mammalian neocortex don carefully removed the skin and sensitivity to pain are unresponsive is to compare its size to the rest of bone from the head of an anesthe- to severe injuries like broken bones the brain. Mammals that live social- tized trout. She sliced off cross sec- and burns. This defect is character- ly tend to have large neocortexes, tions one thousandth of a millimeter ized by having less than 28 percent and their relative size is an indicator thick from each of the three branch- of the normal number of C fibers— of the size of their social group and es of the trigeminal nerve. Under a still far more than trout have. Rose how much they interact. Perhaps this microscope, these branches resem- also notes that sharks—who have not is true for the forebrain of the fish ble an overhead view of a dried been found to possess A-delta or C as well. Perhaps the criteria for de- riverbed filled with rocks whose cir- fibers—behave like trout when they termining sentience depend less on cular outlines have been dyed blue. are hooked. Why attribute this simi- species and more on how important These circles are the same tiny A- lar behavior to pain? your sense of self and of others is to delta and C fibers that signal pain Sneddon cautions against apply- your survival. in human nerves. ing mammal-like properties to these “It may be that some other spe- A-delta fibers have a fatty coat of fibers. Insulated or not, they are just cies have an ‘alternative’ type of insulation, allowing them to relay sig- wires for passing a signal—it’s the consciousness,” said Rose. But this nals quickly. Their activity spikes im- brain’s interpretation of the signal consciousness would be the result mediately after an injury occurs. When that ultimately matters. Perhaps fish of that species’s brain structure and you strike your finger with a hammer, have evolved a different use for their might not include the capacity for A-delta fibers are the first trigger to A-delta nociceptors, she suggests. suffering. The next part of Snedden’s ex- “The other side talks about giving periment was intended to show that fish ‘the benefit of the doubt,’” Rose these nerves convey information to said. “That just means, ‘We don’t know the brain. The trout was anesthetized if something is true, but we feel com- and placed in a custom-built cradle pelled to believe it as if it is true.’” that kept it in an upright position. In 2002, the year in which Rose With tubes and pumps continuous- published his paper titled The Neu- ly flushing its exposed skull, Sneddon robehavioral Nature of Fishes and the looked into the upturned face of the Question of Awareness and Pain, sci- trout and measured the signals that entists in the United Kingdom began a went from face to nerve to brain and series of experiments to systematically concluded that they are analogous to

26 the signals in mammals. the question was “slippery.” Suddenly, affect the well-being of the fish on Rose and Sneddon agree that ar- fish felt pain. a subjective level. Braithwaite has, guments based entirely on anatomy “The issue is that the [Sneddon] perhaps unsurprisingly, teamed up are limited. To argue about wheth- paper garnered much media atten- with a philosopher to design further er fish feel pain, one must study how tion and the majority of outlets failed experiments. fish behave in response to experi- to give it a critical look,” said Dr. Ste- ments that could potentially cause ven Cooke, a fish expert at Carleton hile the debate about pain. Sneddon’s next experiment in- University who has published pa- fish pain continues to volved injecting different groups of pers with both Sneddon and Rose. W rage, the demand for trout with potentially painful sub- “The paper is not very balanced in fish as food—especially in the de- stances (vinegar and bee venom) perspective.” veloping world—has skyrocketed, and comparing their behavior to Rose and six coauthors pub- putting ever more pressure on al- that of a control group injected with lished their latest appeal for skepti- ready-dwindling stocks of wild fish. a benign saline solution. The results cism in December 2012, arguing that According to the European Union, encouraged their next and most am- “fish are unlikely to experience pain” fish farming is one of the world’s fast- bitious experiment. To demonstrate and “much of this research seems est-growing sectors of food produc- real pain, they needed to show that mission oriented and differs, accord- tion, currently accounting for nearly something was happening beyond ingly, from the more detached tradi- half the fish eaten worldwide. Farmed mere nociception—a reaction more tion expected of basic science.” fish are certainly more stressed than involved than a physical reflex. This While the two camps contin- free fish: this is manifest in changes time they repeated the injections ue to duke it out, their fundamen- to their breathing, spikes of hormones with three more groups of trout, tal disagreement has been ongoing at in their blood, and their movements. each placed in a tank with a colorful least since the ancient Greeks began Debates over the suffering of fish LEGO block in the middle. Relying debating the home of the soul. No depend as much on cultural perspec- on the trout’s well-known aversion one disputes that nociception can be tive as on science. In Canada, oper- to new objects, they wanted to see measured, but there is no formula for ating procedures at fish farms have how the injections would interfere converting a physical response into a become increasingly uniform, bring- with the trout’s natural inclination subjective experience. ing vast improvements in the salmon’s to avoid the block. “Rose’s opinion is that [fish pain] well-being. Scotland has implemented The fish that got the saline -in has to be identical to human pain for humane-harvesting laws. Switzerland jection responded as expected: they it to be pain,” wrote Sneddon in an has limited catch-and-release fishing avoided the new object. In compari- email, summing up just how irrele- on ethical grounds, and in the United son, the ones that were injected with vant his perspective is to her camp. Kingdom a pet store was charged the vinegar or bee venom spent more “As neither of us have ever been a fish for selling fish to a minor. But in the time closer to the LEGO block. The we really do not know what a fish feels United States, regulators and indus- researchers interpreted this as evi- so one cannot definitively prove 100% tries do not discuss humane slaughter. dence of a changed state of mind. that any animal suffers.” Fish—along with reptiles, amphibians, The publication of these studies Sneddon and dozens of other re- and invertebrates—are not covered by caused a media sensation. The skep- searchers continue to publish reviews the Animal Welfare Act. tics immediately began publishing and experiments that have traced the “We’re a bunch of troglodyte cave critiques, but Sneddon’s advocates pain signal to the higher-function people on this,” said Dr. Fred Conte, a were no less outspoken. Headline areas of the fish’s brain, further sup- professor at the University of Califor- writers let loose their best ichthyo- porting their argument that poten- nia at Davis who works closely with logic puns: anglers were “hooked” and tially pain-causing experiences do aquaculture producers. We spoke for

27 many hours about the eyes of stur- industry. “Any attack on [recreation- struggle for hours on hooks and lines, geon, the challenges of hydroponics, al fishing] is an attack on [aquacul- nets snare their sensitive gills—and all the fear of regulations, the unsavor- ture’s] customers.” this happens on an industrial scale. It iness of certain aquarium manufac- The situation in Europe could not takes just minutes to haul nets packed turers, and, of course, the question of be more different. By 2004, the Eu- with thousands of fish onto a boat. fish and pain. “The industry has so ropean Union had imposed legal re- If these were cats or dogs, the whole many problems going on in the Unit- quirements for the welfare of farmed operation would be prohibited. But ed States right now that fish welfare is fish, recognizing that “many exist- of course fish are not cats and dogs. just not their top priority,” said Con- ing commercial killing methods ex- Fish are like evolutionary cousins who te. “They are in a reactive mode, not a pose fish to substantial suffering over moved away long ago: we don’t give proactive mode.” a prolonged period of time.” On Janu- them much thought. Conte is no activist—he lowers ary 1, 2013, a new EU protocol came Aquaculture is not immune to his voice and literally looks over his into force, requiring that animals (in- charges of cruelty either, though it shoulder before he mentions “those cluding fish) “be spared any avoidable has embraced fish welfare because animal-rights people.” But he says pain, distress or suffering during their it helps the industry’s bottom line. A that when he brought up fish wel- killing and related operations.” torrent of research has emerged to fare at a California Aquaculture As- “One way to see it is that fish were figure out how to keep newly domes- sociation meeting in the 1990s, the recategorized as an animal,” said Dr. ticated aquatic animals healthy while room went silent. “It was like I had Marianne Elisabeth Lien, a Norwe- still turning a profit. The results have released a skunk in the room. People gian social anthropologist researching been mixed. In his 2009 book, Eating chuckled.” the domestication of fish. Norway, by Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer titled Still, even in the United States, far the largest producer of farmed fish the chapter about aquaculture Our concern over the welfare of chickens in Europe, has protected their welfare Underwater Sadism, pointing to in- and cattle has begun to drive consum- since 1974. By 2012, percussive and festations of sea lice that “sometimes er demand, and fish welfare may be electrical stunning was the only legal eat down to the bones on a fish’s face” the next concern. Industry surveys means of harvesting fish there. and translating the vocabulary of show a consistent consumer inter- Commercial fishermen have no fish-welfare research with the zeal of est in “humane treatment,” although economic incentive to consider the a prosecuting attorney. that interest declines when humane suffering of their fish. Wild-caught According to Foer, fish farms’ as- treatment leads to higher prices. “So- fish die in dramatic ways: they asphyx- sessment of welfare comprises one cial pressures will push changes fast- iate, their internal organs explode, they euphemism after another. Concepts er than the science,” said Conte. “The like “water quality,” “crowding,” “han- bottom line will be the ringing of the dling,” “disturbance,” “nutrition,” and cash register.” “hierarchy” actually mean filthy wa- The new battle is over wheth- ter, crowding so intense that animals er to call negative biological indica- begin to cannibalize one another, tors “stress” or a danger to “welfare.” handling so invasive that signs of A codified concept of fish welfare stress are evident the next day, fish could be enough to spawn a threat that are unable to flee from the pred- to the existence of recreational fish- ators that surround their pens, nutri- ing, an industry Conte estimates to tional deficiencies that weaken their be twenty times larger than aquacul- immune systems, and an inability to ture. “And who supplies their fish?” form a stable social hierarchy, result- he said, referring to the aquaculture ing in more cannibalization.

28 This list of atrocities may well of suffering, Rose opposes many ex- The male in my hand seems to apply to some fish farms, but a visit isting ethical rules for using fish in be the same fish that I held on to a modern, well-run facility makes research, but he is sympathetic to an August evening in northern domestication seem like a series of protecting individual animals. “We Michigan, nearly six decades ago. trade-offs, not unlike those we make have to uphold a standard of conduct I stood in that small stream, feet in our own lives. One could portray with fish, out of ceremonial respect, numbed from wet-wading the New Yorkers, for example, as choos- not something touchy-feely. We have spring-fed current and beheld a ing to inhabit a series of overcrowded to have respect for the organism, val- male Salvelinus fontinalis: humped cells, with drug addicts, broken fam- ue it, and behave accordingly,” Rose back and hooked jaw. Red spots ilies, murderers, and suicides on ev- said. For him, any unchecked com- with blue haloes dotted the flank ery block. They breathe poisonous modification of fish is wrong because beneath the lateral line. Below air, produce mountains of waste dai- it prevents a meaningful connection these spots, along the side of the ly, regularly get hit by cars, and rare- to nature. For him, the trout, the riv- belly, ran a blood red and fire or- ly see the stars. er, and the scientific drive to know ange band. This brilliant color them are one and the same. “I don’t merged with a streak of black and ne night I visited two grad- see a problem with having an eth- then the white-gray of the belly’s uate students at the Co- ical system to guide your relation- bottom. It was the most beautiful O lumbia University Med­­ical ship with other species, regardless of thing I had ever seen: a living jew- Center who were conducting experi- whether they can feel things or not. I el, illuminated in the failing light ments on a new brain-imaging tech- am intensely protective of fish even of evening. I looked up at the sky nique. To calibrate the process, they though I catch them.” above the swampy meadow and paralyzed an elephant-nose fish and Compare Rose’s view to that of realized that the color of the sun- left it under a microscope for hours. Franz Kafka, a strict vegetarian who set was the color of the fish. They It remained awake until it expired. had no sympathy for even a pesca- were identical. I was holding the This experiment could not be con- tarian diet. His friend and biogra- sunset in my hand. ducted on mice, but the university’s pher, Max Brod, recalls him standing ethical guidelines permitted fish to be before the illuminated tanks of a So who exactly is anthropomor- used. There is no consensus on why, Berlin aquarium, speaking to the phizing the silent fish? Are they just but this policy illustrates how much fish: “Now at last I can look at you a blank canvas for our own person- improvisation is involved in applying in peace, I don’t eat you anymore.” al narrative? Is the fish even really ethical guidelines. “There are no regu- Foer retells this episode in Eating silent? Comedian Mitch Hedberg lations against setting mouse traps in Animals and observes that “fish, joked that “fish are always eating the basement, either,” said one of the for Kafka, must have been the very other fish. If fish could scream, the students, “but we couldn’t do that in flesh of forgetting,” eulogizing their ocean would be loud as shit.” Well, an experiment.” suffering, hidden only through the according to a 1968 study in the Clear-skinned zebra fish have carelessness of apathy. Russian-language Sounds of Fish become one of the primary animal Yet Rose’s relationship to fish is Atlas, the European weatherfish— subjects for a vast range of medi- anything but apathetic. In an unpub- which looks like an eel with a snail’s cal studies. They reproduce rapidly, lished essay, he describes the mating head—does scream. cost less to house than other fish, and process of the brook trout “accord- Or, rather, its swimming bladder their transparent skin allows scien- ing to a formula perfected in ancient produces a unique half-second vi- tists to peer inside their bodies in ice ages, before the first flickerings of bration between zero and four thou- real time. human consciousness”: sand hertz when the skin on its back Not believing fish are capable is pierced. O

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