DEEP SEA PISHING

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21708, 15 February 1936, Page 22

DEEP SEA PISHING

TO TUB EDITOR OT TBS TBSSS. Sir,—The day was far spent before I noticed that one “Sinbad” would like to have my opinion oh deep sea fishing. Yes, I have one; he may have it. I see Mr N. M. Bell nodding his approval as I enunciate it. It is that we blood-lusting sportsmen will not be held entirely guiltless in the hereafter for the blood we have shed In the name of sport. When King Edward <grand p£re) got hit on the head by a rocketting pheasant falling, shot by the next shooter, at one of the Sandringham battues (skill with the fowling piece Is a trait in the Windsor family), the Prince of Wales as he then was. may have accepted that knock down blow as a fair retaliation from the pheasant family, and with the bonhomie of the good sportsman that he was. But there is the undoubted reaping of all the sowing that we do in the flesh. Wanton Cruelty is regarded as no mere venial siri on the other side; the law of compensation operates on both planes. So, if the swivel of Zane Grey’s fishing

chair broke, and a whttpgetf jttako, pulled him overboard, and the t awpner of the launch failed to, get his boat-, hook attached to-the seat *of the Zane Grey pants, he might find his purgatory start right away among the shades of all the sharks he has hooked. Mine will not be so scary among the hundreds of pretty little email that I have shot and the thousands df rabbits that I have slaughtered; but .the latter was done In self-preservation. -Yours, etc., February li 1936. TO THS ZDETOB Of *HH PBBSS. Sir.— Sorry to have acted as a stingray, and brought forth a somewhat extreme outburst from "Sinbad," bulj as a good sailor (or is he?) he must know these storms clear the air. Granted the big fish are not very nice hunters and destroyers, we can hardly hope for them to be able to discrij minate between a rescue life-boat, and their natural sea life prey, as represented by other silly fish. They certainly do make the shore bathers sit up and'take notice, but then that is the bather's onus in the first place, is it not? , , , With his point about land aeroplanes I heartily concur, and still wonder how any provident government could grant permission for services in them in the future—not that there is any immediate danger, as was proved by Captain Dickson's pioneer crossing in the little Avro machine, Captain Mercer's second crossing on his record trip to Auckland, and the very numerous subsequent crossings in many small type aeroplanes, none of which has been lost in transit except when in coastal environment Employing the* safety factor of sufficient gliding height to carry over, as they now do, i 9 reassuring, reducing the hazard to practically the train, ship, and motor level, since the "other traffic".risk is almost negligible. ' My object in writing was really to help to dispel the tradition handed down probabiy by fishermen (of necessity) that fish, being cold-blooded, do not feel. As in stock slaughter of all kinds, it is well to see that they feel as little as is humanly possible at the time. As it is now, higher students all know that the fear complex of the killing unavoidably enters the human system with the meat portion, and has a tendency, unless overcome, to engender more fear. However, all these complexes are beginning to be well taken care of universally now they are being better understood, which is welL —Yours, etc., • I.H. February IS, 1936.