PETA India Earth Day Billboard Blitz Highlights the Marine Victims of Discarded Plastic Fishing Gear
Kolkata – To mark Earth Day (22 April), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India is flooding the country’s coast – where eating fish is prevalent – with billboards that depict a turtle ensnared in plastic netting as a reminder that killing fish also costs turtles their lives. Up to 1 million tonnes of fishing gear – which can take 600 years to degrade – enter oceans every year, killing over 250,000 turtles who get caught in it.
PETA India’s billboard in Kolkata is located at Rashbehari Crossing, facing Lake Mall and Hazra, 156 S.P Mukherjee Road. Billboards have also been erected in Chennai, Goa, Kochi, and Mumbai.
Called “bycatch” by the fishing industry, non-target animals killed by fishing gear also include 720,000 seabirds, 300,000 whales and dolphins, 345,000 seals and sea lions, and 100 million 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 many more animals, some of whom are endangered,” says PETA India Senior Campaigns Coordinator Radhika Suryavanshi. “PETA India urges everyone to keep aquatic animals in mind this Earth 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, 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.
