Quote:
Originally Posted by
WorzelGummidge 
In some places it's "widely known" that vegetarians eat fish. To many people it's blindingly obvious that sheep are stupid and bees have hardly any brain function at all. Anecdata does not equal proof. Sheep can remember and recognise the faces of up to 50 other sheep. Bees can distinguish between human letters of the alphabet regardless of font, size or colour, and understand the concepts of symmetry/asymmetry. I can provide references to scientific studies that prove these things, if you want to PM me about it.
This is a link to dozens of scientific studies into fish cognition and 'intelligence', though in my field of study that's a term we use with caution.
While I totally agree that even if an animal is proved to have low intelligence (and I mean proved scientifically, not with no grounds at all) that doesn't mean we should allow it to suffer, I don't accept that fish have low intelligence or that bugs cannot learn or be trained. Seriously, read into the intelligence of fish - it will add more ammo to your arguments when you encounter people that say it's fine to kill fish!
whoa. something learned... +1
Fishing does not only kill fish. We all know that (If you don't belong to 'we all': fishing nets clean the sea ground so that 'no' (I'm using this with caution - someone will come back and tell me that plants are living creatures... you know what I mean) living creature (that includes sharks, dolphins, turtles and whatnot) can survive). What I find to be more important is the dimension of this killing.
I mean, yes, because of tobacco (needing farmland and firewood) there's an area of twice the size of Dallas freed from wood every year only in africa, yes, the cows in south america are one of the biggest climate killers (fart-gas), yes, the rainforest which is the lung of the planet, providing 30% of the oxygen for the whole world, is being burnt down in huge amounts for that, yes, the industries behind those two, meat- and tobaccoindustry do make every attempt of willing people of human humans worthless and destroy the work and effort of years,
but
if the fishing goes on like today, there will be NONE left in less than 40 years (WHO).
And that's ridiculous.
I'm scuba diver, I really don't want that to happen.
Not to talk of the farming which is against all ethics anyway.
I can go deeper into that last one about the farming if anyone would like me to...