No matter how diligent you are about employing the best catch and release practices: using hooks with the barbs pinched off, never using a gaff, and relying upon silicone landing nets that won’t disturb the delicate slime that protects the fish’s skin, fish still get hurt. Instead of being hooked in the tough cartilage of their lip, they will swallow the hook and it will get lodged down their throat or in their stomach. Trying to get it out, or cutting the line and leaving the hook in, you risk mortally damaging the fish. Maybe they will heal, and maybe they will become part of the food cycle by providing a meal for the snapping turtles or crabs, but there is no denying the fact that you have left the fish in a worse state than when you caught it. And no matter how humanely you try and kill a fish you plan to eat, whether you stun it first or sever their spinal cord or bleed the fish out by cutting the gill rakers, you hurt the fish. As I found out pretty quickly, fish bleed bright red blood.
People get hurt in activism, no matter how careful and concerned you are. I’ve planned demonstrations for weeks, set up non-violent civil disobedience trainings, assigned skilled negotiators to liaison with the police, and then one bottle gets thrown, the police charge in, and protestors end up bloody and in jail. Activism, if you are good, also hurts your adversary. I recall one campaign we waged against a particularly egregious developer who was buying up an old community center in the Lower East Side to turn into a high-rent apartment building. We protested, we sat in and occupied the building, we filed legal injunctions, and we stopped him. We also bankrupted his business and his employees lost their jobs. “Good,” you might say, “the greedy bastard deserved it.” And he did, but we also destroyed his dream and harmed those who depended upon him. If I were to do it again, I probably wouldn’t change a thing: I’d still stage that protest and still bankrupt the developer, but I’d need to do it recognizing that people will get hurt.