Revisiting My Moral Guilt About Being Responsible for Life

Three years ago on this blog I wrote a post about the moral dilemma I faced when tasked with killing the invasive bullfrog population in Grand Teton National Park. My writing was sincere and heartwarming, and above all, it was funny. I wrote a lot of funny posts that first year of Teeth and Love. Somewhere along the way – I don’t know if it was from the trials of adjusting to the post-college life or writing for an audience bigger than the class of EN502 or because I let compliments on my writing style get to my head – I started taking myself too seriously and posted something only when I felt like I could tie everything back to a grand moral or lesson about Being Alive, and keep it all under 800 words while I’m at it.

I haven’t posted anything in the past few months because a lot of Things have Happened and I keep waiting for it all to settle down so I can find a theme and thread everything together. A connects to B which then leads to big picture C, therefore we can all remind ourselves that isn’t it wonderful to be alive! But the Things keep Happening and no Theme has appeared yet, and I’m starting to think that these Things will continue Happening for a while, so I might as well put something out there now as proof of life.

On the three year anniversary of refusing to kill an invasive bullfrog tadpole in the Tetons, I participated in the euthanasia of six juvenile Atlantic salmon in Laukaa, Finland. The similarities from that day and this one ironically echoed across space and time, like my supervisor saying you don’t have to do anything you aren’t comfortable with or the way the tadpole – no, the salmon – thrashed violently in my net in an instinctive, innate fight to live. That evening I had a long discussion with my girlfriend about the ethics of using experimental animals for research. They called my supervisor’s justification, for the greater good, a utilitarian approach. The two hundred salmon my research group will use during our experiments this summer will better inform protection and conservation for millions of Atlantic salmon in the wild. But is that not a different version of the trolley problem? I asked. One versus five, two hundred versus two million? Even if I’m not pulling the lever, I am complacent just by studying salmon.

The salmon used in our project will be euthanized at the end of the summer, as they have already undergone multiple experiments in years prior and are born and raised farm fish (despite having wild genotypes passed down from their parents, who were wild salmon). Their chance of survival in the wild is nearly zero, with an almost certain future of dying a painful death with much suffering if released. These farm salmon aren’t living a real life, my girlfriend said to try and comfort me. They were created for research. Euthanizing them is a more merciful way to die.

We placed the six salmon in water mixed with a lethal dose of fish anesthetic. It is, in theory, a painless death. And in the end, dead fish don’t look dead. They just look like food. 

Three years ago I got in trouble for writing about the bullfrogs in Kelly Warm Springs. One picture or post in the wrong hands can turn into a misinformed rallying cry: “SAVE THE BULLFROGS IN GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK” or “#LETMEPUTMYGOLDFISHINKELLYWARMSPRINGS”. Fortunately, my post back then was read only by friends and family, and my influencer status has not improved much in the intervening years. But I brought the idea of this post up to my current supervisor anyway, who also cautioned me about sharing too much information to the public. Then she shrugged. But you have the right to freedom of speech, she said.

How big is a salmon brain? I asked the day we sorted 1600 salmon based on whether we would use them for our experiments (homozygotes only. Equal numbers of male and female. Twenty individuals with unique genotype/sex combinations in each trial. The whole process took twelve hours and that night I slept like a rock). I liked seeing the salmon opening and closing their mouths as they swam, their gills expanding and contracting like accordions. About the size of a shelled peanut, my supervisor said.

I wonder what it’s like to know pain and hunger and danger, but to not understand why river temperatures are increasing rapidly with each passing summer. We as humans can identify signs of stress in salmon: erratic swimming, gasping at the water surface, loss of appetite; but what is it like for the salmon itself?

Thinking about that shelled-peanut brain is what got me through my dilemma. We as humans have done a lot of (if you’ll pardon my expletive) fucked up things to our planet’s rivers and oceans. And these wild Atlantic salmon with their beautiful silver and black scales and little pink mouths are dying despite everything in them innately programmed to survive. It is now my responsibility to do what I can.

My research on the effects of heatwaves on the behavior of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) is one of the many Things that are currently Happening. For now, I will keep working and thinking and forge on into the thick of summer.

With teeth and love!

H

One Emotional Intern vs. Several Invasive Species. June 18, 2023:

https://teethandlove.blogspot.com/2023/06/one-emotional-intern-vs-several.html?m=1vv