This past weekend I visited my parents for my fathers birthday. To celebrate, we went fishing as a family. This was my first time going on a fishing expedition where you keep the fish for food instead of only catch and release. Back when I was in summer camp, one of the activities we had was fishing. We would roll bread around the end of the rod and place it in the water to catch sun fish. It was exciting to catch them and after we would unhook the fish and throw them back in the water. This trip was also my first time going fishing since I went during summer camp. When the boat got out, we were given a short lesson on how to fish then left to it. Pretty quickly people started catching fish.

I hadn’t caught any yet, someone in my family caught a flounder. It was exciting. Pictures were taken. I think my dad unhooked the fish and placed it in the bucket we had brought from home to bring back fish we caught for lunch. I walked over to the bucket and looked in. I felt a pit in my stomach. The fish was flopping around weakly in the bucket. There was no water. I looked at my dad and in a joking manner gestured if I should hit the fish by smiling and raising my hand into a fist. He shook it off and said no. This was the humane way to do it and hitting the fish might damage the meat. I stood around for maybe 10 seconds, and then without consulting anyone or even thinking about it I grabbed a bag of ice from the cooler we were carrying snacks in, walked over to the bucket with the fish, and started repeatedly clubbing the fish with the bag of ice.

Up through this moment, I had purposefully killed 2 non insects in my life. The first time, I allowed Marlie to catch a rabbit. After she did, I felt a wave of adrenaline rush over me. I walked over to the rabbit and it was looking up at me with terror in its eyes. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t just leave it like that, unable to move and terrified. I found a big stick and decided to put it out of its misery. I planned on ending it with one strike, but I didn’t put enough into it. I wound up a second time and came down much harder this time. The rabbit was dead. After, I chain smoked 2 cigarettes on a park bench while Marlie ate the rabbit. I was shaking. The second time, Pico caught a rabbit and broke its back. For Pico, it wasn’t about eating the rabbit, he was happy he caught it when I walked over. When I saw the rabbit, I still felt the adrenaline, but this time it was much easier for me to act. I found a stick and remembered that I needed to swing hard. I killed the rabbit, threw the body in the garbage, and we continued the walk.

This would be the 3rd time. I planned on killing the fish in 1 strike, but the fish was tougher that I thought, and the flopping was making it difficult to make a solid hit, and the bucket didn’t leave much room for a wind up. Instead of quickly and humanely killing the fish, I was just injuring it and making a display. After maybe the 4th blow, I heard my mom say my name in a horrified voice. She was looking at me like I was a monster or a serial killer (that’s what I thought at the time). My dad said to me in a confident voice that I needed to leave it alone to die in the bucket. That is what you are supposed to do. The commotion caused an assistant on the boat to walk over, he said the fish was undersized and needed to be released. I picked up the bucket and dumped the fish back into the water. It swam off.

Both of my parents disappeared into the cabin in the boat. Most likely my mom was frantic and my dad was trying to calm her down. I don’t remember what my sisters were doing. I decided that I needed to figure out what to do when we catch the next fish. I felt there was no way that the most humane way to dispatch a fish was leaving it to drown in a bucket. Google confirmed my feeling. The humane way to kill a fish is with a hard blow to the head to stun it followed by driving a spike through its brain stem. A short time later, my parents stepped out and I walked over to tell them what I read. I don’t remember exactly what they said, but the feeling I remember is my dad was surprised to hear this and my mom ‘knew’ that there must be a better way.

We all got back to fishing, though now my heart was less into it. Both me and my sisters were taking pictures with the fish we caught before releasing them but something felt off about it. To put it in words, it is something like fishing shouldn’t be a fun and leisurely activity. An animal is suffering and the reason we are reeling it up is to eat it. It is okay to be happy when you catch one but to take pictures with it while it is suffering seems wrong. Later in the trip, I walked over to get more bait and my mom said to me ‘I know you just feel bad for the fish and I do too’. I do feel bad for the fish, but what I said back to her and my dad was ‘I think if you’re going to catch a fish you should dispatch it right. Next time we catch one I will probably do the same thing’. As I walked away, in a joking manner I said ‘but first we need to catch one that’s the right size’.

So what are my thoughts from this? Recently, I have noticed that when I have found spiders in my apartment, I have released them outside instead of killing them and when I have found dead animals in the park, I have picked them up in a bag and thrown them in the garbage. Also, I have been finding myself pulled in the direction of volunteering in hospice care. One thought that crossed my mind while I was on the boat was that at least I was on there so I could be the one to dispatch the fish instead of someone else needing to or the fish suffering. Maybe I want to be the type of person who loves life, but is capable of accepting or even integrating death as a necessary component of it.