From the Pack Basket

(Received in email)
"PETA draws a bead on anglers everywhere"
By SHONDA NOVAK

"From the bass desperately trying to escape the pain of the hook as he is
reeled in, to the pollock tumbling endlessly in a trawler's net, to the tuna
struggling for hours with a hook in her throat attached to miles of line
with thousands of hooks, billions of fish suffer at our hands every year."

With that painful, tug-at-your-fishing-line description on its anti-fishing
Web site, the animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals racheted up its "pro-fish" campaign, aiming to reel in as many
anti-fishing converts during National Fishing Week as possible.

PETA hopes the site -- www.nofishing.net -- will help "sink" National
Fishing Week, which started Saturday and ends June 11.

Instead, PETA has declared the coming week "Save our Schools" week. The group is urging anglers of all ages "to pitch their poles and try more
animal-friendly (and blood-free) activities, such as hiking, camping,
swimming or boating."

Why the fuss over fish?

Because fishing hurts, PETA says, and it shouldn't hurt to be a fish.
Hurting animals, the group contends, "is cruel -- not cool." The Web site
depicts a fish dressed like Elvis Presley, lambchop sideburns and all,
flanked by two women. One holds a sign saying "Elfish says: Don't Be Cruel." Beside it, a thick-lipped cartoon-like fish implores: "Mr. (Secretary of the Interior Bruce) Babbitt. Please Ban Fishing."

"Fish have a neurochemical system like humans and sensitive nerve endings in their lips and mouths," PETA's literature says. "As soon as they're yanked from the water, they begin to slowly die of suffocation."

The group quotes, among other authorities, Tom Hopkins, a professor of
marine science at the University of Alabama, as saying that a hook in a fish is "like dentistry without Novocain, drilling into exposed nerves."

But as with most tales, this fishing story has two sides. And the opposition says that PETA's campaign is misguided and that its assertions that "fishing hurts" are bunk.

"I've been told, and I'm no fish, that basically their mouths would have the same sensitivity as if your fingernail had a hook in it," said Jack Kelly,
chief of fisheries for the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish. "There's not a lot of feeling there."

Craig Martin, author of four books on fly-fishing and a weekly contributor to The New Mexican's Outdoors section, agrees.

"I'm a sensitive guy like all fly fishermen that I know, and if I thought it
was inflicting unreasonable pain or irrevocable damage, then I would think about another activity," Martin says.

Countering PETA's sources, the pro-fishing contingent cites its own experts who say the mouths of fish are mostly bone and cartilage that have few if any pain receptors.

But, Kelly added: "I've got to admit it probably would hurt a fish when it
goes into the frying pan."

With the growing popularity of catch-and-release fishing, however, Kelly
says more and more fish are remaining in rivers and streams instead of
landing on the dinner table.

Kelly said he believes that the option to catch a fish and return it into
the water is a key reason fishing has remained popular and fishing-license
sales have been "pretty stable" in recent years while some forms of hunting have seen declines.

But Dawn Carr, PETA's anti-fishing-campaign coordinator, says "there really is no humane way to trick a small animal into impaling themselves in the mouth and yanking them out of their environment into one where they slowly begin to suffocate."

The fish have still been forced to undergo "an unnecessarily cruel and
painful ordeal," Carr says. Furthermore, PETA says many fish don't survive being caught and released -- a claim the pro-fishing camp denies.

Many fly-fishers use barbless flies, which can be easily removed from the
fish, Martin says. Fly-fishers who use a hook generally try to remove it as quickly as possible, with the angler "gently cradling it and rocking the
fish back and forth in the current to pass water over its gills until they
can feel it regaining its strength."

"Any fish you treat like that, there's a 99 percent chance of survival,"
Martin says.

As PETA recommends, Martin says he enjoys other outdoor activities such as hiking, mountain-biking and backpacking. But nothing, he says, compares to fishing.

"No other outdoor sport makes me feel so much a part of the natural
environment," Martin says. His children, ages 10 and 13, also benefit, he
says.

"Nothing teaches my kids conservation and respect for nature more than
fishing," Martin says. He says his 10-year-old son Alex holds the fish with reverence.

"He knows that it's a special treat to be so close to a wild creature,"
Martin says.

Martin is among the many thousands of New Mexicans for whom sport fishing is a popular pastime, even a tradition. New Mexico has about 300,000 to 325,000 anglers, including 270,000 who hold fishing licenses, Game and Fish's Kelly says. The higher figure includes children under 12 and people over 70, as well as out-of-state anglers who come here to fish, Kelly says.

But PETA's Carr says tradition "has never been nor should ever be a
justification for a violent and cruel activity."

"We should be teaching our kids to have empathy toward the pain and
suffering of others," Carr says, "and fishing is a lesson in insensitivity."

Trout Unlimited, a conservation organization in Arlington, Va., that aims to protect and restore North America's coldwater fisheries, doesn't share
PETA's views.

Trout Unlimited has 125,000 members nationwide who "practice true
conservation" and "work very hard to take care of the fish's health," says
Maggie Lockwood, the group's director of press relations.

Lockwood says the group sponsors clinics and produces videos that teach anglers how to properly hold fish, how to remove hooks to lessen any pain and how to return it to the water to give it the best chance of survival.

"Fishing has supported economies and communities for ages," Lockwood says. "As long as there's responsible harvest and we're not depleting a resource to extinction, then fishing probably will always continue to be and probably should always continue to be a wonderful sport that offers quite a bit to the young and old."

PETA's Carr replies: "Groups like Trout Unlimited, they want to conserve what they consider a resource so they there'll be enough animals for them to go out and impale them in the mouth.

"We seek to shift the ways animals are viewed, from being a resource to be exploited to that of the community of individuals that they are," Carr says.

Taking the fishing-eating argument from the terrestrial to the celestial
sphere, PETA even includes a question on its Web site about whether Jesus ate fish.

"Probably not," PETA says. "There is strong evidence suggesting that Jesus was a vegetarian. The only stories depicting Jesus eating fish took place after the resurrection, and most Biblical scholars agree that they are very late additions to the Gospels."

As for the stories of Jesus "multiplying pieces of dead fish to feed to the
masses, there is strong evidence that this story did not originally include
fish," PETA claims.

PETA's Jesus-and-fish literature was faxed to the Archdiocese of Santa Fe but a call seeking comment went unanswered. A receptionist first laughed at the query, then in a bewildered tone said: "I don't know who I'd refer you to."