There’s something fishy about fish

Irsquod like to ask you if yoursquore a vegetarian but Irsquom afraid yoursquoll give me a complex answer and befuddle me You might tell me yoursquore vegan not vegetarian The first time I went scrambling for a dictionary to learn that a vegan is much like a Jain but has problems with anything that has emerged from an animal or bird such as eggs and milk Paneer pasanda would be outYou might mess with my head and say yoursquore ovolactovegetarian Irsquod finally figure out that yoursquore all about plants but donrsquot mind a few animal things like eggs and milkLike sex food preferences are no longer binary therersquos a universe of permutations between vegetarian and nonvegetarian But everyone agrees real men and women eat meat spitting out the bones and then fight wars TamBrams and similar wusses eat leaves and grains and solve quadratic equationsRaw red meat now has a bad rap because factory farming is brutal greedy dirty and lethal to the environment Producing 1 kg of beef requires 1451 litres of water the equivalent of 10 bathtubs and creates about 99 kg of greenhouse gases GHG mdash the equivalent of a drive from Mumbai to Pune in a petrol car The main GHG are methane released by the cows and emissions from growing animal feedLetrsquos talk about Bombai Click the QR code above to join my WhatsApp group to share your Bombai stories for my bookmdashand perhaps answer some of my Bombai questionsIn India openly espousing beef could expose you to an income tax review so you may focus on demeaning mutton ldquoNo issues marsquoam who eats mutton any more Myself I prefer chicken It has a smaller carbon footprint And I do love cheeserdquoYou may have to rethink cheese Making 1 kg of hard cheese requires about 10 litres of milk and uses up about 5600 litres of water 37 bathtubs This gives it a carbon footprint of around 23 kilograms of CO2 equivalents per kilogram of cheese roughly the same as driving a petrol car from Ahmedabad to VadodaraHere the Bengali will up the ante saying he eats only feesh He believes he has found the sweet spot between vegetarians and nonvegetarians Fish is white like chicken and apparently has no blood It cooks quickly like vegetables And hallelujah it has no carbon footprint at allReally I give you ladies and gentlemen the smug pescatarian the one foodie who believes he rules them all Hersquos so wrongI have bad news for you fisheater Fishing may not release greenhouse gases and destroy rainforests but it is devastating our planet in ways I never dreamed of till I saw a documentary called SeaspiracyBy the time Irsquom done with you yoursquoll be craving grass You will never look at a Fish Moilly the same way againLet me count the waysYoursquove heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch the swirling vortex of manmade junk primarily plastic covering 1605000 sq km of ocean somewhere between Hawaii and California Nearly half of it is made up of discarded fishing nets more dangerous to fish than plastic straws because theyrsquore designed to ensnare and kill The practice of longline fishing sets enough fishing lines to wrap around the entire planet 500 times every dayHerersquos a new word for you bycatch Itrsquos all the fish that are caught accidentally while fishing for something else Theyrsquore irrelevant fish and they just die and are thrown back in the water The next time you eat tuna remind yourself that 45 dolphins die for every eight bluefin tunas that make it to the tableSharks kill about 10 people per year but we kill 11000 to 30000 sharks per hour mostly as bycatch adding up to an estimated 50 million sharks a yearCommercial fishing kills over 300000 whales and dolphins annually as bycatch Up to 40 per cent of all the fish humans catch are thrown back as bycatch most of them dead before they hit the waterStill interested in that maguro nigiri sushi with red slices of bluefin tuna Herersquos more deterrent thanks to our savage fishing habits we have depleted 97 per cent of the bluefin tuna that existed a few decades ago By 2048 our oceans will be practically empty of fishWhere will you go for your Goan fish curry thenLetrsquos talk about bottom trawlers monstrous vessels that claw and dredge the ocean to net fish irreparably scarring the sea floor destroying corals and habitats that have taken millions of years to formBottom trawling wipes out an estimated 39 billion acres of seafloor every year equivalent to the combined land area of Greenland Norway Sweden Finland Denmark the UK Germany France Spain Portugal Italy Turkey Iran Thailand and AustraliaAltogether those fishing boats we donrsquot see hear or know about are killing 27 trillion fish every yearItrsquos becoming harder for me to say yes to any meat any more even if it makes me an unwelcome outlier In Palakkad where everything is simpler my mother was taught to make selfrespecting wholesome vegetarian food that tasted real and didnrsquot have blood on its hands I donrsquot know anyone there who failed their exams or died early because they ate only plantsWe grew up on that and Irsquom back to it nowYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper