Yesterday evening I was chatting to a "vegetarian" who eats fish. We had a discussion on the morality of eating different animals.

If you eat a plate of sardines, then perhaps 6 sardines have died just to feed you. If you have swordfish, then perhaps that same swordfish will also have provided another 30 or so other people with dinner. Thus consumption of swordfish instead of sardines would result in 180 or so fewer deaths.

So, is it less moral to eat smaller fish than big ones?

Me thinks God put fish on the planet so we can eat them. As long as they are not an endangered spices due to over fishing then eat I say. 30 years ago in Spain you could eat those very small fish which has now been banned thankfully. (cant remember the name)

So if we follow this to it's logical conclusion it's best to eat whale meat?

Dunno about your logical conclusion.  I think Whales are on the endangered species list. Dunno if you have seen the fish farms off the coast of Spain and France? Replenishing stocks and farmed for us to eat. Kinda makes you feel better.

Antonio, as the swordfish high up the food chain, your calculation underestimates the difference in the number of deaths.  If you eat a swordfish, that swordfish is then unable to eat smaller fish.  By consuming a high level predator, you save the lives of those lower down the food chain.

That's a good point.  I remember reading that one reason cod stocks don't recover from overfishing is that in the absence of larger cod, there's nothing to eat the medium sized fish that prey on the young cod.

I recently had a conversation with a vegetarian who would eat fishfingers because 'they dont look like fish'. Where do you go from there? topdog