Is fishing cruel to fish?

Is it cruel to sloths to own a bicycle? Thousands of sloths die agonizing deaths because of the rubber farming required to build bicycles. Is it cruel to monkeys to eat sugar? Thousands of monkeys die for your sugar intake. Is it cruel to rabbits when you eat broccoli? Thousands of rabbits are killed on broccoli farms. Is it cruel to fish to catch them and eat them? What is cruelty? The fish will die, and more fish will be born to take their place. The monkeys and sloths that die for farming vegetables will never return. Yes, killing any animal is a dire and important event. But every human being kills a hundred animals every day, without even thinking about it. Fishing means killing an animal while actually thinking carefully about it, and taking full moral responsibility for your actions. Even a pure Vegan is killing animals through their daily life, every day. But killing a fish means that you are morally and ethically taking personal responsibility for being a human consumer of life. Every human being is a rampant, relentless destroyer of animal life, whether they be vegan or carnivore. Catching a fish and killing it and eating it is the ultimate expression of humanity. Yes, it is cruel. Yes, it is bloody. Humans like to pretend that they are not cruel and bloody. But we are. We ride bikes that are built with dead monkeys and sloths. We drink water filtered by the corpses of muskrats and turtles. And we eat vegetables grown by the slaughter of prairie songbirds and voles. To catch a fish and eat it means that we, the human fisherman, recognize our own relationship to nature. Every fish we kill and eat should be treated with reverence and humility, as part of the circle of life. And with that reverence and humility comes the responsibility to be a guardian of nature, a voice crying in the wilderness, saying "we are human, we are the ultimate destroyers of life". And you kill the fish, and you eat it, and you bow your head before nature and you say "I am grateful." I am a human being, Homo sapiens, I consume all life that exists, and here in this fish that I eat I am affirming my place in the universe. I do not hate myself, nor do I hate the human species. I kill and eat fish. I am a human being. This is what human beings do. By personally and intimately consuming this fish, I affirm that I am a hunter and a killer, like all the humans before me, and like all humans are now regardless of whether they choose to believe it or not. My eyes are open. I kill living things and I eat them. I am human.

/r/Fishing Thread