Jonathan Balcombe, PhD, is the author of five books, including What a Fish Knows, Pleasurable Kingdom, Second Nature, and The Exultant Ark. He is Director of Animal Sentience with the Humane Society Institute for Science and Policy, and Associate Editor of the online, open-access journal Animal Sentience. He lives in south Florida.
Our alienation from fishes stems from the fact that they have existed, both literally and figuratively, beneath the surface of our awareness. Gaze over a lake, a river, or an ocean, and while there may be legions of fishes carrying on with their lives within inches of the surface, we witness nothing of it.