World Ocean Day: Fishing nets kill 2.5 lakh turtles every year, PETA says

PUDUCHERRY: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India has erected billboards in Puducherry and other cities across India to mark World Ocean Day (June 8) depicting a turtle ensnared in a plastic net as a reminder that killing fish also costs turtles their lives.

Up to 10 lakh tonne of fishing gear, which can take 600 years to degrade, enters the oceans every year, killing over 2.5 lakh turtles.

The billboard in Puducherry is located at No 247, Mahatma Gandhi Rd, Heritage Town.

Called ‘bycatch’ by the fishing industry, non-target animals killed by fishing gear also include 7.2 lakh seabirds, three lakh whales and dolphins, 3.45 lakh seals and sea lions, and 10 crore sharks and rays.

PETA India notes that fishing is considered to be the biggest threat to marine wildlife.

“Eating one sensitive, intelligent fish can spell suffering for another animal, including an endangered species,” says PETA India manager of Vegan Projects Kiran Ahuja.

“PETA India urges everyone to keep marine life healthy this World Ocean Day and every day by choosing compassionate vegan foods.”

More fish are killed for food each year than all other animals combined. Fish feel pain as acutely as mammals do, have long-term memories, use tools, play and sing underwater – yet they and other marine animals are impaled, crushed, suffocated, dropped into pots of boiling water, or cut open and gutted, all while conscious, according to a PETA statement.

PETA, India whose motto reads, in part, that ‘animals are not ours to eat’ opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.