Guest Author - MaryEllen Schoeman
PeTA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, has long distinguished itself as one of the more radical animal rights organizations. In recent years they have toned down their rhetoric considerably; for instance, they have changed their position on spaying and neutering, which they used to protest was ‘mutilation,’ and now support spay/neuter programs. They have stopped insisting that animal shelters are prisons and that the animals in them should be freed. Overall, they have lately been utilizing their vast press power and financial clout in support of realistic programs that will help to end animal suffering.
But their latest campaign, to protect fish, is simply stupid. The idea is that if we rename fish as “Sea Kittens”, people will be less likely to eat them. “No one would eat a Sea Kitten!” proclaims their website. The site is very clearly geared towards children, with bright cartoon graphics and very short, easy-to-read snippets of information, and even a game where you can create your own Sea Kitten. However, the site is also filled with unsupported information, assumptions, and propaganda all masquerading as fact. Tidbits such as “sea kittens like to be petted” and “male sea kittens woo potential partners by singing to them” encourage children to think of fish as being the same as cats, or humans, and statements like “fish have complex intellectual lives” are presented as established fact, rather than rampant speculation. We cannot know if fish have intellectual lives, or even if they particularly like to be petted.
But what we can do is study the biology and anatomy of fish and draw some conclusions. The majority of a fish’s brain is taken up with sight, smell, and taste organs, in addition to a small cerebellum. The cerebellum controls movement and all the involuntary actions such as breathing, heartbeat, etc., and is also responsible for reflex actions, such as when fish react to shadows on the water. Fish brains do not have a cerebral cortex, which is the section of the brain that is associated with memory and learning. So despite some limited studies (extensively quoted on the Sea Kittens site) that suggest that fish have good memories, there is really very little evidence of this, and lots of evidence to the contrary. Fishermen who do catch-and-release fishing often find themselves catching the same fish over and over on the same day, because the fish apparently do not remember to stay away from the hook. They also lack a limbic system, which is responsible for emotional reactions, and they lack prefrontal lobes, which is the part of the human brain that is responsible for what we call ‘consciousness’ – the ability to think about our own thoughts, to wonder, to hypothesize, and to make plans and judgments.
In short, there is no comparison or resemblance at all between fish and kittens. Cats are an infinitely more complex organism, and no amount of name-changing will make fish into cats.
The really frustrating thing about the Sea Kittens campaign is that fish really *do* need our protection. Over-fishing is a huge problem, both for the fish species themselves and for the overall health of our oceans. Fish farming produces sickly fish that may be dangerous to eat, and also creates massive pollution and habitat degradation. Global warming is causing many fish to be unable to find enough food in their native habitats, and others are migrating to new waters, where they compete with the fish already there and change the balance of species. And when a fish species becomes limited in numbers, goes extinct, or ends up in the wrong place, it creates chaos all up and down the food chain, causing bird and marine mammal populations to fluctuate alarmingly, and algae blooms to take over areas of ocean where previously they would have been kept in check by the fish population. The algae blooms themselves cause even more disruption, as they change the temperature, salinity, and light reflectiveness of the water, which in turn affects the climate.
We need to protect fish species and their environment – but not because they are the same as fluffy kittens. Not because they have intellectual capacity, or not. They need to be protected simply for their own sake. They need to be protected so that they can continue to do what they have done for thousands of years, maintaining the health of our oceans and lakes. They need to be protected because, like all living creatures, they have a place in the world that cannot be filled by any other creature.
So visit your local aquarium and learn more about these fascinating creatures. If you eat fish, find out what fish species can be eaten with the least damage to the environment and the species as a whole. (You can do this while you are eating out by texting to the Blue Ocean Institute's FishPhone - link below). Go out to your lakes, your ocean, your streams and ponds, and watch the fish and admire them for what they are – an inextricable part of the web of life that covers our planet.
