The World Peace Diet: Eating For Spiritual Health And Social Harmony

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hooks. Sometimes, to reduce drag, fishers sew a fish’s mouth shut
before towing them as bait. Because a fish who struggles and bleeds
is especially likely to attract predators, fishers often break a “baitfish’s”
back, cut their fins, or notch them with multiple razor slits. 32
The scope of suffering caused by the demand for the flesh of sea
creatures is vast, almost incomprehensible. Whereas records are kept of
the number of individual birds and mammals killed each year for food
(in the U.S., that number is now over ten billion annually), for
“seafood,” only the tonnage is reported. Eighty million tons of water
creatures per year: how many individuals is that? Every individual fish
is a vertebrate with a central nervous system and pain proprioceptors,
like we mammals have. Marine biologists have proven that fish definitely
do feel and avoid pain and that they learn to evade painful stimuli,
even to the degree of selecting the option of food deprivation over pain.
Researchers have also proven what is really quite obvious, that fish can
be fearful and learn to anticipate pain. Besides this, scientists have discovered
that fish and also sea-dwelling invertebrates “generate opiatelike
pain-dampening biochemicals (enkephalins and endorphins) in
response to injuries that would unquestionably be painful to humans, as
further proof of the ability of fish to feel pain.” 33 Like us, they would not
survive if they didn’t feel pain. Their pain sensors are especially dense
around their mouths, where they are often cruelly hooked and pulled.
In addition to feeling pain, scientists have discovered that fish are
far more intelligent than had been presumed. For example, British
experts say that fish, as the most ancient of the major vertebrate groups,
have had “ample time” to evolve complex and diverse behavior patterns
that rival those of many other vertebrates. They report that there have
been huge changes in science’s understanding of the psychological and
mental abilities of fish in the last few years, adding, “Although it may
seem extraordinary to those comfortably used to pre-judging animal
intelligence on the basis of brain volume, in some cognitive domains,
fishes can even be favorably compared to non-human primates.” 34
Recent research has shown that fish are “steeped in social intelligence,”
recognizing individual “shoal mates” and social prestige, and scientists