The last time I went fishing

By Monica on February 2nd, 2008

My previous fish post kept making me think of a blog I posted quite a while ago on MySpace. There is some unpleasant imagery below, but nothing you wouldn’t see on any yee-haw, country livin’, fishin’ channel.

If anyone is interested, I’d also like to recommend a wonderful essay by champion fisherman Steve Hindi entitled “I was a fish killer“. It’s what originally inspired me to write this.

The last time I went fishing was in 2005. I went deep sea fishing off the coast of Florida. On the boat were a couple of young guys who were friends with the captain and trolled off the back for larger game fish. Eventually they caught something, and after a lot of reeling and maneuvering of the boat, we spotted a shark at the end of his line.

I was intrigued, the shark looked huge beneath the water! As the shark neared the boat, one of the mates took out a 9mm handgun and promptly unloaded the entire clip into him. Even then, I questioned how ’sporting’ that was.

Despite the gun, the shark was still far from dead when they hooked it and hauled it onto the boat. Still alive, the mates held it down and started gutting it.

At this point, most of us were pretty aghast. I wished they would have released it, but they splayed him open in front of us and threw his organs overboard. He thrashed and fought the entire time, and was finally thrown into a cooler directly behind where my party stood.

How this is possible, I don’t know. But for the next couple of hours, we had to sit on the cooler lid as the shark continued to thrash about and the mates warned us that he could still bite. Inside I felt terrible about this, and I’m pretty sure others did too, but none of us said anything as we looked down remorsefully upon our own stringers of dead fish.

Back on land, the crew filleted the shark, everyone took pictures, and we were all offered bags of shark steaks to take home. Mine sat in my freezer for many months and were finally given away; even as an omnivore I couldn’t eat them.

Looking back, that day is one of the most disgusting and shameful things I’ve participated in. It was the last day I went fishing, and the last day I stayed silent about things that matter. All but the most ignorant of people now accept the fact that fish do feel pain. Why is it still culturally acceptable to treat marine life like this, then? We encourage children to participate in this violence and have TV shows dedicated to filming the torture. Would we watch shows where people hooked cats and dogs, let them slowly suffocate, then gut them? Would that be suitable family entertainment and a beloved American pastime too?

Now I don’t want to leave you on that depressing note, so I’m going to throw in a totally random dessert shot. Cheer up, there’s always Susan’s Double Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake! (At least that’s what I tell myself some days.)