[For more, visit FishFeel.org]
Steve Hindi,
SHowing Animals Respect and
Kindness (SHARK)
Original publication - May 1996
Many fish species are under incredible pressure from humans, but I told myself, as sport fishers still tell themselves, that commercial fishers do the real damage. Commercial fishers, of course, claim the opposite. In truth, there is a fine, often indistinguishable line between the two factions. We are all guilty, though few who still fish will admit it.
In truth, I had ambushed a fish who was merely seeking a meal, and subjected him to five hours of agony before killing him. For some years the mounted shark hung as a trophy on my office wall.
After witnessing my first pigeon shoot, my perception of my animal trophies was never the same. But I did not quit killing easily. Initially, it never crossed my mind that I would actually stop doing what I had done for three decades. My intention was to stop these vile pigeon shoots, and then go on with the vile things I was doing.
God knows how I fought to continue to kill. Leaving blood sports meant accepting a whole new set of values, and eventually coming to terms with owing a debt I could never repay. But after Hegins, it became clear that I would have to try. Greg and I buried our "trophy" victims, including my first shark and the baby mako, in a grave on our family property, next to the graves of beloved nonhuman family members. I donated the One Resolve to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
Fishing is as popular as it is precisely because fish do not have the ability to communicate suffering as readily as cats, dogs, cows, or other mammals. But I know they suffer tremendously, just as we would if subjected to such horrendous treatment.
I first fished at age five, with my brother Greg, who is one year younger. Each of us caught a perch out of a lake in St. Paul, Minnesota. Fascinated, we watched the two perch swim around in a small bucket until first one and then the other died. I don't remember what happened to their bodies, but I know they were not large enough to eat. Perch are plentiful, and easy to hook, and are therefore considered to be a good species for practice fishing. Many members from both sides of my family were fishers, as well as hunters, trappers, and ranchers. A couple of dead perch didn't rate much concern. Like most children, we learned what we were taught, setting aside whatever qualms we may have felt.
Our mother raised us to care for cats and dogs, and we regularly took in strays, despite housing project rules which forbade it. However, we were told that fish had no feelings, and we killed them with abandon. Our first decade or so were spent pursuing panfish, as they were prevalent around the lakes we were able to walk to. Sometimes family members and friends drove us to other lakes. On a good day we would fill up buckets or stringers of sunfish, crappies, bullheads and perch. Sometimes they were eaten, and sometimes they were simply thrown away. The most important thing was the acquisition: the victory.
In our early teens we also fished for carp. Although they are considered
a "trash" species, not recognized as "game," they are much larger and fight
much harder. Carp typically were left to suffocate on the shore. We were
told this was good for the other fish in the lake, as carp supposedly turned
the bottom to mud. Sometimes I would give a fleeting thought to whether
these animals suffered as they lay gasping on the shore. Like catfish and
bullheads, carp take a long time to suffocate. After a while, we would hit
carps' heads with rocks to kill them quickly. Once we brought M-80
firecrackers to the lake. We stuffed one into the gill of a large carp, lit
the waterproof fuse, and released him. Seconds later the water erupted in a
red spray. When the muddy water cleared, we saw the carp's head, blasted
away from his body. I watched tentacles of flesh sway back and forth in the
current. Small fish inspected them with curiosity. For some reason we felt
bad about this, although no one said anything in particular. We did not do
that again. Looking back at it, however, I guess that victim suffered far
less than those who suffocated.
In our late teens we got our own cars, and turned our attention to different
lakes and larger game fish - trout, bass, walleyes and northern pike. Of
these, northerns were my favorite, because of their aggressive nature. Often
we bought large sucker minnows as bait. The suckers were hooked just under
and to the rear of the dorsal fin, in a way that would allow as much
movement as possible, and would maximize their survival time. Some fishers
would run the hook through their eyes. The suckers were thrown out and
suspended under a bobber, or were held close to the bottom by a lead sinker.
The bobber was big enough to prevent the minnow from pulling it underwater,
but small enough to be taken down by a larger predator as it grabbed the
minnow. Although we were told, and wanted to believe, that fish did not feel
fear or pain, we almost always knew when a predator approached the sucker.
The bobber would begin to bounce and move; although the sucker wasn't big
enough to sink the bobber, his or her panic was obvious. The bobber jerked,
pulsed, and slowly dragged across the water as the bigger fish approached.
Often the predator would only strike the sucker and let go, probably sensing
that something was wrong. We would reel the smaller fish in to find him, or
her, often still alive but ripped to shreds.
At one point I decided that live bait fishing was cruel and not
particularly "sporting," and I pursued my prey thereafter with artificial
lures or dead bait. This, I felt, would be more humane. As time went on, we
increasingly often addressed matters of ethics and conservation, at least
superficially. Spokespeople for fishing began talking of catch-and-release.
This, they assured, would secure both the future of our victims, and the
tradition of humans harassing and killing them. In catch-and-release, we
would hook our prey, allow them to suffer as they fought for their lives,
and then release them, hoping they would survive to endure this torture
again. What we never bothered to admit was that any supposed quest for food,
our supposed primary objective as hunters, played no part in our new ethic.
Yet we could not admit that the vast majority of us were pulling hooks into
the mouths, eyes, tongues, throats and internal organs of animals simply
because we loved the feeling of their struggle against our cruelty. At about
the same time catch-and-release became popular, there came another move to
make fish abuse more "sporting." This time the ethical gurus decided that
fishers should use lighter gear to fight our victims. It was of course no
accident that the move spawned a whole new avenue for profit. There were
smaller reels, lighter lines, and lighter rods made of new materials. New
record classifications were developed that gave almost anyone a chance to
hold a "world record" because he or she killed a weird-size fish with some
weird-class line. Fishing magazines taught anglers new methods to use with
ultra-light gear. For me, ultra-light methods were a very successful method
of destroying many species of fish.
Of course, using ultra-light gear condemned our victims to more suffering
than ever in the name of sportsmanship. We thought it was great. A small
fish could be fought not for a couple minutes, but perhaps for a quarter of
an hour, half an hour, or more. As someone who invested heavily in
ultra-light gear, I was able to in some cases extend my victims' misery for
hours. I even wrote articles on the subject that appeared in local fishing
magazines.
Coming of age
As I reached my early twenties, I continued my quest for bigger fish. One
goal was to catch a fish over forty pounds. For a Midwestern freshwater
fisher, this was not easy. Few Midwestern freshwater species ever top forty
pounds. I wanted either a muskie or a Chinook salmon, and for a few years
spent plenty of time, effort, and money in both U.S. and Canadian waters,
searching for my trophy. When I wasn't fishing, I was either working to make
the money I needed to pursue fish, planning my next expedition, or reading
up on my obsession. A library book about shark fishing almost immediately
convinced me to try it. Over the next few months, I made ready for a trip to
the Atlantic Ocean.
At first, my conversion to shark fishing seemed to quell a fairly quiet but
nagging voice suggesting that killing animals, especially those much smaller
than me, was not completely defensible as a hobby. Many fish species are
under incredible pressure from humans, but I told myself, as sport fishers
still tell themselves, that commercial fishers do the real damage.
Commercial fishers, of course, claim the opposite. In truth, there is a
fine, often indistinguishable line between the two factions. We are all
guilty, though few who still fish will admit it.
In the spring of 1985 I drove to Montauk Point, Long Island, New York. I immediately found that my preparations were completely inadequate. Nevertheless, by a stroke of luck and macho stupidity, I succeeded in killing a seven-and-a-half foot, 230-pound Mako shark, despite of my undersized boat and equipment. My fish story about the one who didn't get away was written up in the New York Daily News.
For the next few years I heard my story retold by those who did not know
I was the human participant, and it was a real ego boost. Fishermen love to
tell stories, whether their own or someone else's. Every year, the fish
became larger and the boat became smaller. In truth, I had ambushed a fish
who was merely seeking a meal, and subjected him to five hours of agony
before killing him. For some years the mounted shark hung as a trophy on my
office wall.
At home were other mounted animal bodies, testimony to my insecurity,
insensitivity, and willingness to kill for fun. As I look back, the whole
thing seems quite macabre. Over the next few years I went to the ocean at
least twice a year, for two or three weeks at a time. I bought a new boat,
made for ocean fishing, and named it the One Resolve, because of my
determination to hunt and kill a rare thousand-plus-pound great white shark.
I stole the lives of uncounted victims of many species. But what should have
been a killer's dream come true was somehow losing its luster over time and
death. On occasion we would go night fishing for tuna offshore. Tuna are
large, very strong fish, with rigid bodies. Once pulled onto the deck of the
boat, they beat their tails incredibly fast and furiously. They can break a
fisherman's foot. When the bite was on, the deck could literally be full of
tuna struggling for life. In order to keep them still, we simply put a cloth
over their exposed eye to block the light and calm them, much as you would
calm a horse. This was a problem. Much like a horse? How much like a horse?
I wouldn't do this to a horse. Why was I doing this? For years, I managed
not to answer that question.
Chumming
There was also the time that sea birds were bothering our lines in the
chum slick. A chum slick is a gooey mixture of ground-up fish, dumped into
the water to attract sharks. It also attracts birds, who swoop down to pick
at bits and pieces of fish. Sometimes birds would hit our lines, or
temporarily get their feet caught in the line. One day when the sharks
weren't biting, that was more than I was willing to tolerate. One bird was
particularly bold, and refused to react to yells, waves or anything else I
did to dissuade him. So I shot him. At that close range, he was dead
immediately. His body upended, and his legs flailed. While my logical mind
knew he was gone, my conscience told me that I had done something rotten,
and to finish it. But the shotgun jammed. The next thirty seconds seemed
like thirty minutes as the bird's legs kicked and "ran," and slowly came to
a halt. It was almost half an hour before his body floated out of sight. I
watched almost the entire time, knowing I was the world's biggest asshole,
trying desperately and unsuccessfully to convince myself that I had a good
reason to do it.
Then my brother and I encountered a baby mako shark next to the boat, in our
chum slick. Mako sharks are fearsome-looking, with large gnarly teeth and
coal-black eyes that make them look as if always enraged. But this miniature
version, of about twenty pounds, was just plain cute, like a lion cub trying
to strut his stuff with baby growls and tiny hops, feigning attack. My
brother Greg asked if he could catch the baby, and have him mounted. This
was a common practice, but one that I abhorred. This was, after all, a baby.
From a fisher's view, however, he was also a lot cheaper to mount, and did
not require the room a large fish did to display. Initially I refused to
allow the capture, but when the baby hung around to gorge on the chum, a
sorry version of brotherly love won out. No effort at all was required to
capture the baby. Greg stuck a dead hooked mackerel in front of him, he
grabbed it, was hooked, and Greg swung him into the boat, into a fish hold.
We did not shoot or even hit the baby in the head: that would ruin the
mount.
I don't remember how long it took him to die, but it was very long. Every
now and then I would open the hatch to see if he was dead yet, and he would
look at me. Sharks can move their eyes to a point, and they can and do
follow activities around them. I will never forget that baby watching me as
I waited for him to die. This was probably the lowest I dropped in my long
history of killing.
Then came the day that a friend and I hooked into the largest mako shark
I ever saw. She looked like an ICBM missile when she jumped, and my friend
and I were so fearful that our legs shook. This was going to be the trophy
of our lives. For the next two hours we fought and fought just to get the
huge animal close to the boat. But a short time after the fish began the
familiar circling around the boat that indicated the start of fatigue, the
hook pulled out. Probably she had been "foul hooked," meaning hooked in the
body somewhere other than the mouth.
Our dreams of a "monster kill" were shattered. We fished the area for the
rest of our trip, but without ever so much as seeing our "trophy" again.
When we were ready to leave for home, we were still sulking like scolded
puppies. I moaned and groaned my disappointment to the marina manager, with
whom I had become good friends. His response was not what I expected. He
looked me in the eye and said, "Steve, I'm glad you didn't kill that fish."
I was so taken aback, I said nothing. He told me that such a large mako was
almost certainly a female. He said he recently learned that females had to
attain many hundreds of pounds before even reaching the age of giving birth.
With the mako population in serious decline, he said, we had to stop killing
them. This made sense to me, even if I still wanted that "trophy." But then
he said, "I'll tell you the truth, I just don't know how much more of this
killing I can take." Oh shit. Now that nagging voice I was hearing for years
wasn't just in the back of my mind any more. It was being voiced right in
front me, by a friend. I didn't know what to say, except to murmur that I
respected his right to his opinion. I didn't say that I was having a tougher
and tougher time trying to deny this feeling in myself.
One of the last straws occurred at a most odd time. I was fishing with a
friend and working companion named Rick, with whom I had taken a number of
successful fishing trips in the past. We hooked a 200-pound mako shark right
at the end of the day. The fish jumped repeatedly and fought hard, all of
which we should have enjoyed immensely. Having brought the victim to the
side of the boat, I made a good shot with my .357 magnum revolver, right on
top of his head, resulting in an instant kill. Rick and I brought our victim
right up next to the boat, and as was customary, I sank my hunting knife
right behind his head to sever the spinal cord. This insured that sharks,
who are very tenacious of life, were truly dead. As the beautiful
luminescent blue of the mako began to turn to turn gray with death, I turned
to Rick and said, "You know, I just don't enjoy this the way I used to."
There. I had said it. That nagging feeling that had dogged me for so long
now had a voice, and was my own. But things got stranger when Rick, his
smile disappearing, said, "You know, I feel the same way." What was my world
coming to?
Hegins
I don't know how long I might have been able to ignore my observance that
I was doing something indefensible. It might have gone on for years.
Fortunately, Hegins, Pennsylvania lay close to the route I took from Chicago
to Montauk. On the way to my boat in 1989, I chose to stop and see the
infamous Hegins Labor Day pigeon shoot. After witnessing my first pigeon
shoot, my perception of my animal trophies was never the same. But I did not
quit killing easily. Initially, it never crossed my mind that I would
actually stop doing what I had done for three decades. My intention was to
stop these vile pigeon shoots, and then go on with the vile things I was
doing. I approached many of my hunting and fishing friends for help in
fighting pigeon shoots, which as I explained, were not only unethical, but
cast all of us "legitimate sportsmen" in a bad light.
With the exception of my brother, none of the great hunting
"conservationists" were willing to take any time away from killing to
actually try to help animals. It was about a year before I gave up blood
sports. God knows how I fought to continue to kill. Leaving blood sports
meant accepting a whole new set of values, and eventually coming to terms
with owing a debt I could never repay. But after Hegins, it became clear
that I would have to try. Greg and I buried our "trophy" victims, including
my first shark and the baby mako, in a grave on our family property, next to
the graves of beloved nonhuman family members. I donated the One Resolve to
the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
As I tearfully bade her good-bye, I renamed her the New Resolve, for she
would now be used to save lives instead of taking them, to rescue marine
animals in trouble, and to patrol for poachers. A few years later, we would
even be briefly reunited on the coast of California, while trying to stop
Chicago's Shedd Aquarium from capturing dolphins. When I first talked to
activists about fishing, at Hegins in 1989, one person asked me, "Would you
still fish if they had vocal cords?" I believe the answer in most cases
would be no. Fishing is as popular as it is precisely because fish do not
have the ability to communicate suffering as readily as cats, dogs, cows, or
other mammals. But I know they suffer tremendously, just as we would if
subjected to such horrendous treatment. While many people may at first be
taken aback at the mere suggestion that fish can suffer, I believe society
can grasp the concept. And if we can make people feel for those who cannot
cry out their suffering, how much more will they feel for those who can?
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