Paper short abstract:

Tibetans understand waterworlds as non-human realms, proscribe fishing and fish-eating, and limit interactions between humans and fish. This environmental history and conservation biology paper asks how and whether terrestrial Tibetans must now be held responsible for their aquatic neighbours.

Paper long abstract:

There is a long-standing proscription against fishing and fish-eating in Tibetan society. Tibetans see waterworlds as the abode of capricious aqueous beings called lu who will punish humans who enter or exploit their realm. This worldview is supported by their socio-ecological experience. The Plateau's most plentiful fish, snow trout, can be poisonous, and their stocks do not replenish quickly, making them a dangerous and unsustainable food source.

One outcome of the Tibetans’ widespread aversion to fish was that they did not develop the same knowledge traditions about fish that they do about yak, horses, and other animals. British officers and scientists were the first to conduct extensive surveys of the region’s fish in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Chinese, Indian, and international biologists exponentially increased studies of the Plateau’s fish from the 1990s. Along with research, these outsiders changed fish community structures by introducing new species, encouraging aquaculture (fisheries and brine shrimp) and, more recently, fish conservation measures. In response to this influx of fish culture, fish-eating or refraining from fish-eating has become an identity marker on the Plateau, as has the Buddhist practice of tsetar (life release), during which Buddhists release multiple, often invasive fish species into Plateau rivers, often adding to the influx of invasive species in this fragile aquatic environment.

This paper combines environmental history with conservation biology to ask how or whether a society that only engaged with the aquatic world sparingly and carefully should or could be involved in safeguarding the lu’s realm.