Yes, Spearfishing is Ethical, Humane & Environmentally Friendly

There are people who are thinking about getting into spearfishing or who are interested in it and have concerns regarding the ethics involved in it. This is understandable, as the fish certainly do meet death in a brutal manner. However, compared to almost any other method of getting meat, spearfishing is as legal as any method available. The only thing that professional spearos pay very close attention to is, which fish they are catching, as well as having proper spearfishing and freediving gear with them at all times.

To answer these questions though, we do need to include one caution. Spearfishing will only be as ethical in the hands of the person who practices it.

In this article, I’ll be trying to explore the morality of spearfishing in general along with its humaneness and its impact on the environment.

Is spearfishing considered to be ethical?

If you do not believe that eating and killing animals is wrong The only solution to this question should be that spearfishing is an ethical act. I’ll go into more detail about the humaneness and eco-friendliness of spearfishing below, but it is a tradition that humans have done since before the moment we first became a species.

A shrewd spearo is able to skip shots of weak species and can let even prized fish live to reproduce more offspring. Spearfishing can also be selective, and only take one or two of a particular species from a single location before moving on to the next. Spearfishingdone right could be the definition of sustainability. It’s about taking a smaller amount of fish and letting the fishery sustain itself and flourish.

Are human beings at risk from spearfishing?

The humane nature of spearfishing is an important aspect of the ethical question, but I think it’s its own issue. There’s some debate regarding how much pain fish actually experience, but for this argument, we’ll disregard the issue completely and conclude that their survival instinct as well as a stark aversion towards death is in itself a type of pain.

Here’s how a fish dies if it is taken by a responsible spearfisherman. The fish is shot, and the shaft of the spear travels through the body. Most of the time, the spear will be able to penetrate the brain and fish will instantly die. If not, the spearo must fight the fish. A skilled spearo will then cut knives into the fish’s brain to kill it. This is done both for ethical reasons and to enhance the quality of the meat.

With a smaller fish, it usually dies within a few minutes of being shot. For larger game fish, the fight could last longer and it could be more than ten minutes until the time of its death. The same is true with fishing on a rod or reel however there is the argument that hooking by your mouth can be less stressful than being caught by spears.