Confronting fishing.

This week started off on a relatively positive, creative, inspirational note... A close family friend is having a wedding (vow renewal... what's the difference, right?) on the weekend, and everyone's pitching in to help... So I've been conspiring with Mum. Very fun, very messy, very busy. Brilliant.

...But then we go to the beach this evening... It's Summer in Australia, so it's still light out and warm at about 6-7pm... We drive a few towns over, still on the peninsula, and stop at a beautiful beach with a very old, very long pier. We walk up and down on the sand, decide that it's a bit too cold for a swim, and decide to check out the pier instead... 

There's lots of people at the end, and there's a bench seat there, so we figure it might be worth taking a look at what all the fuss is about. What seems like a ten kilometre walk on a rickety old planks-and-nails pier lands us in amongst fishermen, and fisherwomen, huddled around in their puffy waterproof jackets... They're speaking Italian, which we know very little of, but they're saying "calamari" and a couple of other words to their friends in English. One of the ladies taps me on the shoulder and says, "Pardon me, please. No want to hook you in your face." ...My thoughts transition to a scene from a movie - a man getting a right hook to the face from a large drunk man in a dirty white singlet... Probably not what she's referring to... Mum and I move a couple of metres back, and as the lady is winding and winding her fishing line in, this squid seemingly flies up onto the pier... Tiny little thing... It's making sucking sounds, like it's sneezing. It IS sneezing...kind of. It's trying to spit ink at the lady. The squid is so freaking small, but she says it doesn't matter, "Still good. Not matter. Small okay."... Size doesn't matter to this woman. I guess that's a plus... But she's unhooked the squid, and just left it to spit all over itself on the plank next to her while she tries to reel in another one. It might not seem sad to you, but watching the tiny squid trying to defend itself against a plank and a large Italian woman was just heartbreaking... Ink can't save you now, little squid... I almost thought it'd be kinder for the woman to start cleaning it and preparing it then and there...
I've taken some photos, of the squid, the Italian lady, the group huddled around a bucket of fish, and the sunset... So we start walking back... But as we're nearing the end of the pier, Mum kind of half-jumps back and grabs my shoulder... There's a completely mutilated stingray just floating in the water... Guts are kind of just hanging out of it, floating next to it, and the sides of its body have been hacked off, as well as its tail... I thought it was a dead shark, that's how much of its body had been removed...

I'm a very proud nature lover, so when I saw the squid trying to ink itself to safety, and the remains of the stingray, I just felt disappointed, and disgusted. As humans, haven't we mutually decided on ways of going about things such as hunting? As humans, haven't we mutually decided that the best way to hunt is to put the animal out of its misery as fast as possible? Why do we not do this? And why do we continue to mutilate, to destroy, and to torture our precious wildlife?... Just because it's there, and it's edible, doesn't mean we have the natural right to just do whatever we like to it before we eat it. It's cruel, and in the age of technology and information, I feel that we should have grown out of this caveman phase. I'm not against catching and eating your own food - it's probably healthier and better for you in the long run... But I believe there comes a point where you should slow down, be gentle, and be grateful for what you have... Don't just take everything because you can. Don't just kill everything because you can. Don't just do whatever you want because you can. There's still right and wrong, even in nature. And I think as modern humans, we're still not entirely in touch with that. ...And that makes me very sad.