Many people firmly believe fish are dim-witted creatures incapable of feeling pain. Accepting that an animal has the ability to suffer from pain changes the way we choose to interact, handle, and care for it. After all, pain is a negative, unpleasant sensation that we try to avoid. It makes most of us feel uncomfortable to know that someone else is hurting.
Most people consider fish to be different; they're ... well, they're fish. While they have a face with eyes, nostrils, and a mouth, these features appear to be rigid and fixed, which contrasts sharply with the more expressive, mobile faces of most terrestrial vertebrates, and yet, ever since I read Victoria Braithwaite's book "do fish feel pain?", I know that they absolute do. I haven't held a fishing rod in my hand since that day.
Which is why when an old mate from my days on Thursday Island sent me links to this series of fishing videos, I did at first not want to watch them, but as soon as the Tip of Cape York with Seisia came into sight, and the SWIFT cargo ship and Thursday Island, I was ... well, "hooked".
I lived and worked in many places, often for as short a time as three months but usually a year, and never more than two, and it is impossible to say which of those places left the most lasting impression on me.
Bougainvile did, as did Burma and Saudi Arabia, and I loved the Greek islands, but Thursday Island will always have a place in my heart for its quaintness, its remoteness, and the people I briefly befriended there.
It didn't take me long to catch on why my friend had sent these videos: he stars in Part 1 at 11:00 diving on his favourite shipwreck. He even wrote a book about it: "The Wreck of the SS QUETTA, Cape York 1890".
Thanks for sending me the links to these videos, Hubert! I should be outside mowing the lawn but the weather has turned hot again and I'm about to watch the videos for the third time! You may want to read my travelogue of the time when I went back there in April 2005 - click here.
To top it all off, you may enjoy to watch the above video clip which I found on the website of Roko Island Pearl Farm. I've just heard Padma's car pull up and must help her unload the Christmas shopping she's done.
I'd earlier gone to the online banking website to see how much she's put on the VISA-card. It doesn't quite break the bank but it's getting close. Luckily, the BHP shares are up fifty cents today which evens things out.
