Still, the sharks were harvested for scientific purposes, their huge livers were suspected sources of anti-cancer compounds (sharks never get cancer). The others taught us about shark behavior and biology. While I was at Cape Haze, the very first instance of shark mating was observed and photographed. Two tigers were copulating in one of the pens, it caused quite a sensation among the staff. There was no economic imperative to increase the catch.

It could be argued the scientists made their living off those deaths, but they did not constantly market the product in an attempt to increase sales. Once they had the fish they needed for their research, they harvested no more.

Its a bit different from cutting off the fins to make soup for rich restaurant patrons and throwing the rest of the helpless animal back into the sea to drown.

And I think our growing awareness of animal cognition is going to lead us to figuring out how to keep the one we need alive. Sharks apparently have a richer life than we’ve known, though they don’t seem to have eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. No egos, or not much of one.

For such voracious eaters as sharks to refuse to eat to the point of death seems to say something, though it may only be that they regard the prepared, McDonalds model, food as beneath them.

But I don’t fish for sport any more. Not too long ago, I realized that was unnacceptable behvior, and I quit fishing for pleasure, an activity I have enjoyed ever since I was a child. Call me irrational and inconsistent, but eating a fish you’ve caught is one thing, torturing it for fun is something else altogether.

Catch-and-release is better, but it stresses the fish, many never recover after being released, and the very act of fishing, with its lead sinkers, non-degradable synthetic line, and consumption of bait species puts too much stress on the environment, even if you catch nothing.

Too often, environmentalists love the environment out of some misplaced chidish, sentimental need to shelter the fuzzy-wuzzies. A well-managed fishery that provides employment and protein is a worthwhile thing; provided it is sustainable, and the habitat and the harvested species is allowed to recover. But to cause extinction, or to destroy habitat is unforgiveable, not only for moral or esthetic reasons, but for purely practical and economic reasons as well.

You can’t own the sea like you can own a piece of property, it is all interconnected and without boundaries, its life in constant motion in space and time. The alleged virtues of husbandry inspired by private ownership simply do not apply there.

You cannot own a species or a habitat, you can only own a boat, and the economic imperative is to fish an area or species dry, destroying all the by-catch and habitat that gets in your way. Then you get a bigger boat and go further out. Fishing is like mining, except if you can do it with moderation and intelligence, the fish will always come back.

The sea belongs to everyone. And it is dying.

Unfortunately, it was held at the college where my mother worked and in the town I was going to HS. My mother and sisters were spending the summer with relatives about 90 miles away, and I was, ostensibly, staying in a dorm on campus and being educated in a wide variety of things.

I figured out that if I volunteered for cafeteria duty I was excused from the morning body count. Therefore I could be out all night and just show up at the cafeteria. Therefore, I did. My friends and I played hearts, drank, smoked and in general raised hell at my house for the last week of the Institute, simply because we could. One of them gave me a ride to campus, and picked me up after dinner. It was all cool. Mom was due back on a Saturday, and we planned on Friday night cleaning up.

Mom came home Friday. Hell to pay. Thank God she had her sister with her, and a cousin of mine. And she didn’t know how to load and shoot the gun in the house.

And I don’t remember anything about the Institute except for getting some award for tests we were given the second day.

In retrospect that was a sad portent of a lot of wasted time and effort. No wonder some of us have to spend the last half of our lives making up for the first half.

By the way, that is a fascinating story. I wonder how much longer it will be before humans learn to respect the other forms of sentient forms of life.