Save the sea kittens?

When you take a look at this photograph, what do you see? It’s a stupid question, but while most of us are quick to respond with: “it’s a fish, obviously” it seems that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals would give you quite a different answer. They would tell you that this slimy little creature is in fact…. a sea kitten.

Yep, that’s right, a kitten – of the sea! It’s all part of their latest campaign to re-name fish in an attempt to discourage people from killing them for food and hooking them for sport.

The organisation has claimed that if fishes’ ‘similarities’ to cuter, more popular animals were highlighted, people would be less likely to hurt them. As campaign-coordinator Ashley Byrne, points out, “who could possibly want to put a hook through a sea kitten?”

So, if the idea were to take off, the next time you hit your local fish bar after a drunken night out, you’ll be asking for “sea kitten and chips” – with ketchup, please!

PETA are renowned for their radical tendencies, with a bizarre philosophy that seemingly considers the life of an insect equal to that of a human being. Many of us will remember their infamous supermodel fronted anti-fur campaign, and the organisation on record as having compared factory farming to the Holocaust.

By suggesting that we should rename fish to sea kittens, they seem to have taken absurdity however to a whole new level! Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that fish are no more ‘sea kittens’ than my pet cat is a ‘land fish’. PETA intend to highlight their similarities to more popular animals, but what on Earth does a fish have in common with our typical domestic pet?!

The idea is pretty odd whichever way you look at it, but what makes it all the more infuriating is the fact that they have chosen to promote this idea directly at children.

Their campaign includes a series of sea kitten bedtime stories and computer software allowing young people to design and name their own kittens; meanwhile the group have been found to be campaigning outside numerous American schools.

This, for me, is where the real problem lies. Would it be acceptable for a group of vegetarians to stand in a school playground displaying pictures of butchered cow in an attempt to stop kids from eating hamburgers? Of course not, so why is this any different?

It’s a devious way of promoting their message, taking advantage of children’s vulnerable and gullible nature.

Plus, how is a parent supposed to get their child to eat fish as part of a healthy balanced diet if PETA have convinced them that in doing so they have violently murdered Tara the Tunafish?

Children are generally quite fussy eaters anyway, and if this campaign were to take off, PETA could potentially land parents with yet another food that their kids won’t touch. The way in which they are driving their message home seems unethical, not to mention ludicrous.

However, this is not to undermine the issue PETA are trying to address. Their farcical campaign aside, the abuse of fish by the fishing industry should arguably be a concern to all of us.

More than 17 billion fish are killed for food in the US alone each year, while sport fishing kills 245 million animals annually. Without any legal protection from cruel treatment, fish are impaled, crushed, suffocated, or sliced open and gutted, all while they’re fully conscious.

PETA claims that fish are abused to such an extent that it would warrant criminal charges on cruelty if the victims were dogs, cats, or even cows or pigs. Therefore it seems this problem warrants genuine consideration, so why are PETA downplaying it’s seriousness by using cartoon fish and bedtime stories to promote their message?

In doing so they are arguably running the risk of belittling the issue at hand. Equally, if you log on to their website, (http://www.peta.org/Sea_Kittens/index.asp) you will find that their campaign is also extremely uninformative, with no figures or any explanatory introduction.

Moreover, their idea to re-name fish entirely is so extreme that most have chosen to ridicule and dismiss the notion altogether, so PETA have actually failed in their objective to get people thinking cruelty towards fish.