The second piece of a three-part series following Dr. Sylvia Earle’s lecture on January 11th
Sea life often finds itself in a vulnerable position; humans upset the natural balance of the oceans by using fishing techniques to keep pace with the mass-consumption of seafood. Dr. Earle sites this as one among a multitude of reasons she chooses not to eat any seafood.
Throughout her lecture, I found myself wondering whether Dr. Earle ate fish or not. She spoke of fish and other sea creatures with such a passion, talking about how different fish have distinct personalities, attitudes, and behaviors. I found it hard to believe that she could eat them after such descriptions. She spoke of the sea life she interacted with much like you or I would talk about a pet.
My friend, who had joined me to listen to the lecture, turned to me and said, “I wonder if she eats fish,” echoing the questioning voice in my head. The curiosity was beginning to irritate me to the point where I considered asking about it in the question and answer session, but, thankfully, Dr. Earle answered on her own accord, and, no, she does not eat fish.
She never actually stated that she adopted a completely vegetarian lifestyle; nonetheless, her decision and reasoning got me thinking about the attitudes of many vegetarians I know and probably those of many others across the nation and world.
I would like to first give the disclaimer that I am not a vegetarian. I’ve toyed with the idea, but I like chicken and fish. I would say that I could refrain from eating red meat, but I like bacon. So, I am not preaching to “Go Veg!”, nor am I “Veg” bashing, I am merely throwing an observation out there for you to chew on, with scallions or bacon bits.
I know a handful of vegetarians, about eight actually. Now, it would seem to me that adopting the label of vegetarian means only eating produce type products and dairy. Fish and other seafood are living, breathing, bleeding animals.
Of these eight vegetarians I know, five consume fish and/or other forms of seafood.
A pescetarian is the correct term for “a vegetarian who supplements their diet with fish,” according to dictionary.com.
Dr. Earle said that we seem to be more sympathetic to creatures that are more like us. Cows and pigs have hair; they interact with humans; they have cute babies; they walk around, eat food, drink water and sleep; we respect them more than we do slimy, water-dwelling, egg-laying, plankton-sucking sea dwellers.
For those that adopted the vegetarian lifestyle on the platform that animals are treated cruelly in the process that brings them to our table, it seems a bit hypocritical to consume seafood.
Fish pulled out of the sea in large nets are dumped into boats and cargo holds to die suffocating in the air we find so harmless. Now, I don’t enjoy thinking about cows being killed so I can eat my hamburger, but I personally would rather be paralyzed by a bullet like they are than suffocate until I croak.
Dr. Earle objected to eating seafood mainly on the grounds of preventing the destruction that fishing techniques cause to populations of sea life and their habitats (see the last post: “Don’t Kill the Golden Goose!”). One other interesting point she raised involved the lifecycles of some commonly consumed fish.
She claimed that tuna live many years (the data I looked up in a variety of sources claimed from 7-20 years life expectancy depending on the species) and that the tuna we eat are normally only partially mature and are often caught at about ten years of age, as is the case with many other large fish.
Not only are these organisms older that I previously thought and presumably many think, but this means the organisms eat quite a bit of food themselves before they get to our table. “And the relevancy?” you ask–Well, according to Dr. Earle and, upon prompting, also a lesson I remembered learning in high school biology, a tuna eats smaller fish, crustaceans and other sea life, whish eats smaller sea life, which eats smaller organisms that eat plankton. The technical part of this cycle arises when toxins, such as mercury–the current health-scare revolving around seafood–are introduced to the cycle. As toxins move from the bottom of a food chain to the top, they increase in concentration.
I always found this detail baffling, reasoning that they would be diluted as they moved up the food chain, but after getting the question wrong on the AP practice test, and then having a similar question on the real test, I vowed never to forget that fact.
This actually makes sense; it’s why health junkies and experts everywhere warn against eating “large fish” too often because of their high mercury content. Shape magazine says to “avoid eating high-mercury fish such swordfish and shark,” and we know that those organisms are definitely toward the top of the chain in the ocean.
Mercury isn’t the only toxin we pollute our waters with either, so all of the other chemicals—think laundry detergent, oil compounds, pesticides—are also being filtered through and concentrated in the fish we eat. Not too appetizing.
My roommate cited conservation of resources as a reason for her decision to go vegetarian, rambling off some facts and numbers that accounted for the water and land that would hypothetically be conserved by growing crops on grazing lands. Much more of the population could be fed by these professed crops, thereby “ending”/mitigating national hunger.
It’s a bit ironic that, while in support of conserving resources, she actually contributes to a practice that uses more resources than it produces, a surprising fact I recalled from reading Stolen Harvest, by Vandana Shiva, a book I would recommend to anyone interested in the plight and future of plants, the environment and the market involved with and the actual quality of the food we eat.
This brings up one weak point that Dr. Earle addressed. She supports the consumption of farmed seafood such as shrimp and fish—also known as aquaculture—instead of consuming seafood caught in the wild.
I would support this practice if it were further developed and didn’t rely on mass amounts of resources to produce an inefficient amount of output. The industrialization of aquaculture and the attempt to mass produce luxury goods such as shrimp creates a wasteful system, using an estimated 1.1 million tons of feed (fish meal), which is created from 5.5 million tons of wet-weight fish, to produce 5.7 million tons of fish (estimated for 2000, Stolen Harvest).
Doubly ironic is the fact that the fish used to make the feed to produce the harvested life, which, remember, Dr. Earle supports on the grounds that it will prevent depletion of the oceanic life, is actually harvested from the sea.
There may be more efficient procedures now, but it seems that aquaculture has a long way to go before it becomes an alternative to ocean fishing, as the former relies upon the latter to function.
This mini-argument ties into the vegetarian point as well, simply by showing that our resources are not any better spent in the market of fishing or aqua-culture.
After stringing these facts and ideas together, I belive that to be a vegetarian, especially if one adopted the lifestyle for specific reasons and not just dietary ones (such as animal cruelty or resource conservation), individuals should either choose to follow the lifestyle of vegetarianism wholly or find away to redefine themselves and their lifestyles.
An animal is an animal. A plant is a plant.
So, for all of you vegetable totin,’ cow dotin,’ fish cookin’ individuals: pescetarianism or bust.
