I must say that this is the kind of scientific research I dread - laboratory based and ultimately accompanied by a lack of common sense.
Nonsensical experiments on rainbow trout
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The National Angling Alliance has answered the points well, especially the comments by Dr. Bruno Broughton. As he rightly says, no angler is surprised by the presence of sensitive receptors in the fishes' head region (or any other region for that matter) because the fish has no arms, legs or claws and has to do all its attacking and feeding with its head and mouth.
But the presence of nociceptors, which respond to tissue damage stimuli, does not indicate that the fish feels pain. What it indicates is that the fish can detect tissue damage which its body must repair very quickly if it is to continue feeding. The very act of a fish feeding causes tissue damage - hence detection by endorphins and then simultaneous pain suppression by oparins and repair goes ahead. Much of a fish's metabolism must be devoted to day-by-day tissue repair and regeneration.
However, rather more important than Dr Sneddon's research claims are her other reported remarks (Daily Telegraph, April 30).
She drew the line at catching fish and throwing them back, which could cause suffering. Well, if anglers did throw them Dr Sneddon, that might he the case. But they don't. They put them back, carefully. And, in consequence they do not “…show high mortality” as she claims from “some studies”.
This claim by anglers to return fish successfully can be proved absolutely totally, so in her remarks Dr Sneddon has betrayed a gross ignorance of the sport. And it is a moral judgement too: nothing to do with her claimed science.
And she makes another moral judgement too, saying she had no problem with anyone who caught and quickly killed a fish for eating. Well, this is an attitude I have been warning UK anglers about for twenty years now - one editor actually ended my series because he claimed that readers didn't understand my arguments, and that returning fish alive was complete justification for angling.
Of course it is, I agree with him, but many, many people outside angling see it as the main thing wrong with the sport. Dr Sneddon clearly does.
We must have our arguments ready to deal with such idiot philosophies; otherwise they'll convert the whole of the non-angling public to those views, as they have done already in Europe.
So, in the comments so far made by our great and good, in reply to Dr. Sneddon, I haven't yet seen any comments to the above effect.
NAA, over to you.
Stuart Wilson
