Is this type of fishing considered unethical?

I'm currently writing a paper on the ethics of fishing, and I wanted to get some alternative input about one of my paragraph topics. I'm discussing the idea of a fisherman who continues to fish even after learning that the salmon stocks have become dangerously low, and whether this would be considered ethical behaviour (and this is all under the assumption that fishing for salmon is legal). I want to argue that it is unethical because he/she knows of the depletion and therefore is responsible for their actions, but the other side of the argument is that, as a single fisherman, he/she has a very negligible impact on the population of salmon, and by quitting fishing they are essentially losing their job and income. This is a very wide open topic, and I was hoping to get some input from some of you, so I thank you in advance for any advice!

Cheers!

I'm currently writing a paper on the ethics of fishing, and I wanted to get some alternative input about one of my paragraph topics. I'm discussing the idea of a fisherman who continues to fish even after learning that the salmon stocks have become dangerously low, and whether this would be considered ethical behaviour (and this is all under the assumption that fishing for salmon is legal). I want to argue that it is unethical because he/she knows of the depletion and therefore is responsible for their actions, but the other side of the argument is that, as a single fisherman, he/she has a very negligible impact on the population of salmon, and by quitting fishing they are essentially losing their job and income. This is a very wide open topic, and I was hoping to get some input from some of you, so I thank you in advance for any advice!

Cheers!

Well first, even if fishing is legal it doesn't necessarily speak to whether fishing is morally permitted. Remember, moral and legal standards are two different things, and though they overlap significantly you shouldn't equivocate the two. So I would be explicitly clear which standard you will be relying on.

Second if you are assuming fishing (or to be more specific killing fish for ends X, Y, Z) is morally permissible you'll have to justify that assumption first. If you want to put the aside the question of whether it is ethically permissible to kill fish in the first place then you should make that clear as well (although this is a big leap that may puzzle some people, me included).

Regarding the normative claim of fishing, you seem to be appealing to outcomes which is more in line with consequentionalist reasoning. If "depletion of fish" matters you'll have to argue why it matters and to whom it matters. To be honest though, I don't see how you can persuasively argue this without taking the fish themselves into account. If all that is being weighed is the interests of some humans against other humans, you'll have to make some pretty strong arguments why maintaining fish populations is an important goal for all people.

As for the counter arguments, well if ethical reasoning guides us in how we (all) ought or ought not how to act, then the "single fisherman" argument doesn't work very well since the reasons the single fisherman follows are the very same reasons all fishermen should follow. If other fisherman were to rely on the same reasoning as the objection, it is not necessarily the case there would be a negligible effect on the fish population. The money one is harder because arguably you are denying fisherman important means for their well being, and they will be significantly affected by this.

Like I said before, if you don't take the well being of fish into account it is harder to argue against this position. Not all together impossible though.

I'd rather call it 'the morality of fishing'. Ethics exist in favour of what many people would consider to be over-fishing to the depletion of fish stocks. Ethics also exist that favour the fish stocks over the requirements of the fisherman. I guess that your job is to compare and evaluate the various ethics and even to write a polemic in favour of a particular moral stance.

[Scott]

The entire argument seems to rest on the premise that there is itself something 'unethical' about causing the extinction of the salmon.

We could even change the example to make it something less debatable. For instance, we could assume that Salmon is also the only significant food supply for the village and for the sake of argument if the Salmon go extinct all the fisherman and their families and townsfolk will starve to death. As a thought experiment, this provides us with more dire consequences from which to see how the fault spreads. Even so, is it 'unethical' to cause fully or in part the entire population to starve? As an amoralist, the best I can do is either say no or ask what one means by unethical.

If 'unethical' simply means to cause harm to another (presumably in an intentional, non-defensive way), then one might argue that fishing one Salmon out of endangered species would not be an act of harm in a causal sense, even if the extinction would cause starvation, because as the OP points out the fisherman isn't causing the extinction himself or killing the very last salmon. In metaphor, if you place one strand of hay on the camels back and then after another million people each put a strand of hay on its back, did you cause the camels back to break? What if they all would have broken the camel's back anyway?

If 'unethical' is defined in a more utilitarian way, then one would be condemned not just for causally harming someone but for not helping. In fact, to act ethically, one might have to hurt some people to help others such as by murdering an 'innocent' little girl to harvest her organs to save the lives of a handful patients in need of transplants who would die otherwise. In such a utilitarian sense, it would be so-called "unethical" to destroy the salmon if it would cause such great harm to all the townspeople.

Back to the original example, again, it depends what is so allegedly undesirable about the extinction of the salmon.