From: jokim@jarthur.claremont.edu (John H. Kim)
Subject: Re: Animal Activists
Organization: Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 17:58:21 GMT

keith@clodii.Columbia.NCR.COM (Keith Boyd) writes:
>In article <tl3-mwA@engin.umich.edu> Robert Drongowski <Robert.Drongowski@cc.umich.edu> writes:
>>
>>Bow hunting season for deer started on10-1-92 in Michigan.  What does
>>this have
>>to do with Rec. Outdoors.Fishing??  Well, the animal activists were in
>>the woods
>>using whistles, banging pots and pans and playing stereos loudly in
>>attempts to disrupt  hunting.
>>If anyone in rec. fishing land thinks these people will not attempt to
>>prevent
>>fishing in the near future, then your kidding yourself.

>I for one do not doubt they (AR types) will eventually protest fishing
>at the local or individual level. They already have shown what they 
>will do at the international level by stealing driftnets (which I
>disapprove of because they are indiscriminate)

Driftnetting in international waters is illegal, so mandated by the UN.
They deserve to be stolen.

>and ramming the power 
>head (which hauls in the drift nets) on fishing vessels to stop it.

You probably saw this from the videotape made by Sea Shepard, a militant
environmental group.  While I don't agree with most of what the group
does, I think the driftnetters have done far more damage than all the
environmental groups put together.  And if I'm not mistaken, the rammed
ships were fishing illegally - Japan denied the incident ever occured,
even though it was all on videotape.

>They are already active as the poster above mentions in anti-hunting,  
>but I wonder what could/would they do to stop an individual from fishing
>in a public waterway???  Make noise to scare the fish...Ram your boat... 
>something worse?? 

I think there's one basic difference between hunting and fishing
that makes fishing much harder to target.

With hunting, Joe hunter goes out into the wild, stalks a prey, shoots
and kills it, takes it home, and eats it.  For some reason, the idea
of killing something living naturally in the wild upsets most people
(never mind that most animals do it every day).  On the other hand,
Joe hamburger eater goes and buys a burger made from cows whose entire
purpose in life is to fatten up and be slaughtered and sold as meat.
For some reason, this doesn't upset people as much as Joe hunter.
Most people have been conditioned to accept Joe hamburger eater.  They
see steaks and ground beef every day.  They see cows penned up.  But
they don't see wolves or mountain lions pursuing deer and rabbits and
ruthlessly tearing at them and eating them while the body is still kicking.
If somebody questions you about your hunting and you say, "Well, do
you eat steak?" he can respond, "But that's different - I'm not out
there killing something living free in the wild."  The animal rights
folks take advantage of this and target hunters when their real target
is all taking of meat, be it deer or cows (or fish).

With fishing, the distinction isn't there.  Fish farming is beginning
to catch on but even there, the fish are still close to wild stock.
Most of the fish you buy in the stores comes from the same place we
fishermen catch them - oceans, rivers, lakes.  People are used to seeing
and buying fish at the market, and there's a much closer link to those
fish and fishing than there is to steaks and hunting.  If somebody
questions you about your fishing and you say, "Well, do you eat fish?"
there's not much he can say back.  (C&R *is* different, which is why
it sometimes gets more flak than C&kill fishing)

>  Anti-fishing will be coming to your town soon. Like Bob says...
>COUNT ON IT.

I agree, I just don't think fishing is a vulnerable as hunting.  Unless
the world decides to go vegetarian.
-- 
John H. Kim                 | (This space to be filled when I
jokim@jarthur.claremont.edu | think of something very clever 
uunet!jarthur!jokim         | to use as a disclaimer)
Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.fishing