Hong Kong - The waiter serves up a generous helping of
hyperbole with his sales patter as he points to a giant garoupa
gawping out of the glass of a neon-lit fish tank on the pavement
outside a seafront restaurant in Hong Kong.
'This is a very special fish - it is more than 100 years old,' he
says, gesturing to the fish struggling to turn its metre-long body in
the confines of the tank.
'If you want to eat it, it will cost you around HK$500,000 (64,500
US dollars). You will need a very big party.'
For months now, this magnificent creature has been on show to
passers-by, working its way onto hundreds of snapshots as it tries to
circle in the tank that suddenly became its home after decades
cruising the inky, limitless depths of the Indian Ocean.
Capture brought no quick death for this and dozens of other large
exotic fish crammed into tanks lining the pavement in seafood
restaurants across Hong Kong and Asia.
The taste among Asian diners for exotic fish appears defiantly
recession-proof. Falling fish stocks and rising prices have if
anything, it seems, sharpened people's appetite for luxury seafood.
However, the increasingly popular practice of enticing customers
to restaurants with the display of huge fish in small tanks is
troubling animal welfare experts.
The Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) in
Hong Kong has likened it to the way caged leopards or shackled
elephants were displayed in the city's colonial days half a century
ago.
SPCA executive director Sandy Macalister said of the display of
garoupa in Hong Kong's restaurants: 'These wonderful animals, which
since the 1940s have lived and bred in the coral depths, now lie
behind thick distorting glass in a narrow tank on the footpath.
'If a passerby or a restaurant patron knew that these magnificent
creatures were more than 65 years old, would that make a difference?'
Macalister believes laws should be changed to stop big fish being
put on public display in cramped conditions by restaurants. 'The
problem is that until very recently, no one has really understood
fish in the same way that no one understands lobsters and crabs,' he
said.
'In fact they have sophisticated brains, and animal welfare
science shows that they are feeling things we never knew they felt.
'Some of those fish you see outside restaurants have probably been
around since the 1940s. They are used to swimming around freely in
the depths. The next thing they know, they are in a tank on a
footpath. It's cruel and it must be terrifying for them.'
Expert research suggests that in spite of common misconceptions,
fish have memories and feelings similar to other animals, according
to Macalister, meaning that being kept for months or years in a
hugely restricted space amounts to a sublime form of torture for a
mature adult fish.
'The only thing with a fish is it can't express it,' he said.
'They learn, and they have memories, and they can identify people.
They feel stress and they feel pain. People used to believe fish
couldn't remember anything for longer than three seconds, but we know
now that isn't true.'
Macalister said that as the law currently stood, it was very
difficult for prosecutions to be brought. 'The issue is defining what
is too small in terms of a tank,' he said. 'If the fish has clean
water and he has got the space to move around, then it's not
prosecutable under law.'
Marine biologist Yvonne Sadovy of the University of Hong Kong said
the notion that fish feel pain and stress was becoming increasingly
accepted in academic circles.
'There has been a big question over whether fish feel pain and how
they respond,' she said. 'Fish are vertebrates like us. They have a
backbone and a lot of the biology and physiology have some
similarities to us. The nervous system and hormonal system in some
ways are very similar.
'I think most biologists would say there is absolutely no reason
to believe they would not feel pain. How they perceive it is
obviously incredibly difficult to know, but you pick up a fish and
take it out of water and put a hook in its mouth and it struggles.
'There is something clearly uncomfortable and not right and that
fish is perceiving stress in some way.
'There have been studies of fish in mariculture environments where
stress levels are measured by hormones when they are crowded and not
fed properly, and chemicals associated with stress are very high.
'There is no reason to think that they don't feel pain, In fact,
that would have to be the assumption, unless it can be shown that
they do not.'
Professor Sadovy has examined how large fish are treated in Hong
Kong and said: 'The way they are handled is pretty awful. They are
there for the spectacle and to attract people to the businesses.
'They often have abrasions. I guess when they are shipped and
often moved over large areas, they get banged around.
'Outside restaurants, I've actually seen these fish physically
thrown from one net to another. People stand on the tanks and pick
one up in a net and throw it to another tank like a game of
lacrosse.'
Professor Sadovy said: 'We used to put lions and tigers in tiny
cages in the past. With fish, we still don't treat them like we do
other animals that we have come to have more respect for. Fish always
get left until last.'
As far as Macalister is concerned, a public debate and a review of
the law on the treatment of fish is urgently needed. 'We should start
the discussion today,' he argued. 'Otherwise future generations might
wonder how we could have been so inhumane.'
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