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Sangbin Park
Professor Gillespie
Honors 231 A: Animals, Environment, Food & Justice
28 February 2015
Week #8 Reflective Journal: Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace and The End of the
Line
In this week of class, we learned about how marine lives are impacted by human
consumption of them. David Foster Wallaces article, Consider the Lobster, delves into the
issues surrounding consumption of lobster while The End of the Line focuses on portraying the
issue of overfishing. The overarching theme is that humans are destroying the marine ecosystems
by consuming seafood irresponsibly.
Just several days before watching The End of the Line, I watched a TV show that featured
the issue of overfishing in South Korea. Pollock, one of favorite fish of Koreans, have
disappeared from the Korean seas. Once abundant in quantity, they are nowhere to be found.
Decades of overfishing has wiped out their existence. Nowadays, they are rarely caught and it is
not clear how many of them are living in the Korean seas. The laboratory, where the government
is doing a desperate research to restore pollocks population, has only three live ones to try
artificial breeding. One possible reason for their dramatic decline of population is attributed to
overfishing of young walleye pollock. Young pollock is commonly referred to as nogari in
Korea. It was believed for a long time that they were of a different species of fish. This
contributed to overfishing of nogari. Thus, Korean fishermen have unintentionally killed off
young pollock and, now, there are no more adult pollock left to be fished. The seafood industry
in Korea has turned to Russia and Japan for pollock to meet the demand of consumers.

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Interestingly, the show highlighted the fact that not many Korean citizens are aware of the fact
that pollock has merely disappeared from Korean seas. The disappearance of pollock in Korean
seas is similar to what had happened to the Northern Cod in Canada. As the film, The End of the
Line, mentioned, overfishing has contributed to the collapse of the cod population in the region.
It is clear that humans are overfishing. Our current level of seafood consumption is not
sustainable. Seafood could go extinct in 2048. The scariest part is that there is no alternative to
fishing. Currently, the only solution seems to be to fish sustainably which will require fishing
quotas and strict enforcement of them. Modern fish farming, a seemingly attractive alternative, is
not a viable alternative for fishing. It was mentioned in the film that wild caught anchovies are
fed to salmons raised on farms. Considering the fact that a large amount of anchovies is required
for raising salmons, this does not seem like a good alternative to fishing. The current method of
fishing farming is not sustainable. Simply, we are overfishing one fish to raise another one.
Another problem surrounding seafood is the ways in which people consume seafood.
Take the story from Wallaces article on lobsters. People capture lobsters alive, band their claws,
and put them in close-storage. Lobsters, who do not like crowding, have to endure unimaginable
stress until they are eaten by humans. The ways they are prepared are not so graceful either.
They are usually put in a pot alive and boiled to death. They are not the only ones facing this
fate. Clams are often boiled alive as well. Sashimi, or sushi, can be prepared by cutting live,
sometimes conscious, fish into edible parts. Wallaces article on lobsters seems to focus on
whether lobsters can feel pain or not for measuring the cruelty involved in preparing them.
However, I believe that the deciding factor for cruelty cannot simply just rely on whether or not
organisms can feel pain. Pain is a complex subject that humans do not have a full understanding
of. We cannot explain all causes of pain. For example, there is still no clear explanation for

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phantom pain, which is a phenomenon in which an individual experiences pain in his or her
amputated leg. Pain is a subjective experience that can be only observed through behaviors or
explicit communication. Therefore, humans can only infer if an organism can feel pain. I believe
that the way we measure animal cruelty should consider human standards as well. We know
that boiling live animals to death is cruel. We do not have to mitigate our practices by saying that
lobsters cannot feel pain or are less sensitive to pain.
Clearly, there are many issues involving seafood. On one hand there is overfishing. On
the other hand there are moral issues of preparing certain seafood. In the conclusion of his
article, Wallace asked, After all, isnt being extra aware and attentive and thoughtful about ones
food and its overall context part of what distinguishes a real gourmet? (Consider the Lobster).
Quite frankly, I am left with the same question as Wallace. How do we accept and consume
seafood or animal products knowing what the cost of consuming them is? What can we do? Do
we stop eating them completely? I believe that we should all take a moment to critically evaluate
our current practices.

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Work Cited
Wallace, David Foster (2004). Consider the Lobster, Gourmet,
<http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster>.