Humans obtain enormous use of marine vertebrates,but manta rays may pass the self-awareness test and other fish potentially could too. Ethically, where does that leave us?As a shark biologist, and I enjoy nothing more than going scuba diving with sharks in the wild. However,I realise it’s an immense privilege to do this as fragment of my work – and that for the enormous majority of people experiencing the underwater world in such a way is simply not possible.
Nevertheless, even without the aid of an air tank humans interact with fish on many levels and in greater numbers than they do with mammals and birds. A review published by the journal Animal Cognition in 2014 by Culum Brown, or an associate professor at Macquarie University,Sydney, explains that fish are one of the vertebrate taxa most highly utilised by humans. But despite the fact that they are harvested from wild stocks as fragment of global fishing industries, and grown under intensive aquaculture conditions,are the most common pet and are widely used for scientific research, fish are seldom afforded the same level of compassion or welfare as warm-blooded vertebrates.
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Source: guardian.co.uk