If animals have inalienable rights, as some animal rights activists argue, how can hunters and fishermen justify killing them?”

A case in point involves the tag-and-release program adopted by the Billfish Foundation in response to diminished fish numbers and the negative public perception of trophy fishing. Supporters contend that this program allows the thrills associated with the sport without damaging existing fish populations, all the while providing scientific research intended to perpetuate the species. In this program, sport anglers cooperate with researchers who tag the billfish, then release them to collect data.

Animal rights activists contend that billfishing is cruel and unacceptable. The tag-and-release program fails to account for the rights of the individual fish.Activists also assert that tag-and-release fails as a conservation tool because the struggle involved in landing some big game fish results in death or exhaustion to the fish; big-game fishing is the cause of, not the solution to, diminished game fish numbers. They likewise insist that very little “science” has actually emerged from the program. But more important, animal rights activists criticize the morality of subjecting fishes to repeated pain and exhaustion,hooking them,playing them,damaging them to the point of death, then releasing them, all for the pleasure of humans. The activists scoff at the idea of killing animals to save them. They ask, “How can people justify killing, torture, and maiming, all in the name of pleasure?” Indeed, they attack all forms of fishing as repugnant. Nonetheless, they argue that subjecting an innocent animal to repeated torture through catch-and-release is worse than killing the animal outright. Hence they oppose the Billfish Foundation, and all such organizations, who in their ethical calculus fail to account for the rights of the fish they catch.