PROF: CAN'T TUNA FISH, CAN'T HURT A FISH.

Byline: BILL BECHER

Do fish feel pain? Not according to an article by Professor James Rose, a professor of zoology at the University of Wyoming.

However, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the group that seeks to ban fishing, was quick to give the article the hook.

The extensive analysis by Rose, who according to PETA has confessed to being an angler, is called ``The Neurobehavioral Nature of Fishes and the Question of Awareness and Pain.''

``Awareness of pain in humans depends on specific regions of the cerebral cortex,'' Rose said in the article. ``Fishes lack these brain regions and thus the neural requirements necessary for pain experience.''

The assumption that fishes feel pain is an anthropocentric interpretation of reactions by fish to stimuli that would produce pain in humans, according to Rose, who added there is no scientifically valid evidence to support the assumption that fish think like humans.

Rose said a fish's reaction to being hooked is an escape response, not an indication they are feeling pain. He said that lack of a pain response is an advantage for fish. Hammerhead sharks, which prey on stingrays, have been found with as many as 96 stingray barbs embedded in the mouth, throat and tongue.

PETA officials, who have asked state park agencies to ban fishing, wrote a letter last week to the president of the University of Wyoming asking that he disavow Rose's findings.

``Fish, like all animals, feel pain, and no one needs a college degree to know that,'' PETA Fishing Campaign coordinator Dan Shannon said.

But apparently it does take a Ph.D to figure out fish can't think like people. If they did, they'd probably be easier to catch.

--Rockfish restrictions spawn another lawsuit: A second Central California fishing group has gone to court seeking to overturn regulations limiting the nearshore recreational rockfish season to six months, but biologists say the restrictions are needed.

The Central Coast Fishery Conservation Coalition (CCFCC), a sport-fishing group, and two party-boat owners have filed a lawsuit against the Department of Fish and Game and the Fish and Game Commission to halt enforcement of the new rockfish regulations.

According to Melvin de la Motte, the group's attorney and president of CCFCC, the lawsuit is similar to the one filed by the Coastside Fishing Club. De la Motte said the DFG acted against the law by creating regulations without adequate scientific basis.

``The judge should make the DFG get off their butts and get out there and do surveys,'' de la Motte said. The CCFCC later might take on federal fishery managers who have restricted fishing between 20 and 600 fathoms.

De la Motte said anglers are seeing more bocaccio than ever before. He also claimed rockfish are not overfished and that the bocaccio stock assessment by Alec MacCall of the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is the basis of the restrictions, only used fish larvae data.

The group hopes to raise money to hire biologists to refute the DFG findings.

Seven species of rockfish, including bocaccio, canary rockfish, cowcod, darkblotched rockfish, Pacific ocean perch, widow rockfish and yelloweye rockfish, have been declared overfished by federal officials in recent years.

MacCall said his stock assessment used catch rates by recreational anglers, catch rates by commercial fisheries, indexes of reproductive success from a Central California survey and power-plant intake data, in addition to the larvae study.

``If you plot data from all the sources, they all look the same,'' MacCall said.

Bocaccio, sold as ``red snapper'' in markets, are now down to 5 percent of their unfished amount. It will take 97 years for the fish to recover in the absence of all fishing, according to MacCall's 2002 study, which recommended annual catches of bocaccio be reduced to a near-zero level.

MacCall said fish reproduction is like the interest on a bank account, and if you withdraw more than you earn in interest the account dwindles. That's what has been happening for many years as prior estimates of West Coast rockfish stocks used average reproduction rate assumptions that were too high. Not all fish have consistent reproduction rates.

``Boccacio reproduction is so erratic it's more like a lottery,'' MacCall said.

``In 1999 we won the lottery when for the first time in over a decade, bocaccio had a good reproductive year.''

Those fish are now at the stage when they are most likely to be caught by recreational anglers. But their presence does not mean the fishery is not in trouble, according to MacCall. One year's reproductive success won't make up for years of overfishing.

Milton Love, a research biologist at UC Santa Barbara and the author of two books on Pacific rockfish, agrees anglers are seeing only young bocaccio and that they are not a sign of a healthy fish population.

``Fishermen are good at finding fish,'' Love said. ``But they're not very good at counting them.''

--New name for DFG? Members of the Sierra Pacific Fly Fishers, a San Fernando Valley club, have come up with a new name for the Department of Fish and Game if it merges warden operations with the California Highway Patrol, as was suggested by a San Francisco outdoor columnist.

The anglers propose that the new agency be called, ``The Department of Fish and CHiPs.''