Whales Appear On Staten Island Ferries, Reminding Us About Dangers Of Discarded Fishing Gear

0 Environment, Morality and Ethics, Pets and Animals, Staten Island News

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Whale Takes Over Staten Island Ferries With Pro-Vegan PETA Plea

New York — In time for peak whale-watching season, a whale entangled in a fishing net is making a splash on seven Staten Island ferries—and washing up on a mural banner in Whitehall Ferry Terminal and on the Zippertron over the ferry’s loading doors—to remind tourists and residents that abandoned fishing gear kills 300,000 whales and dolphins annually. The new PETA appeal offers a solution: “Don’t Eat Fish” and “Go Vegan.”

In the fishing industry, even whales are callously referred to as “bycatch,” a euphemism for nontarget animals who get caught or become entangled in fishing gear and then are discarded or simply die. PETA notes that death by fishing gear is one of the biggest threats to the survival of many of the world’s 86 cetacean species—including humpback whales, who increasingly frequent New York’s waters and represent more than half of reported entanglement cases—and that eating fish contributes to the decimation of ocean ecosystems.
“By simply eating vegan, everyone can protect the growing number of whales visiting the city’s surrounding shores,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA urges everyone to show compassion to all aquatic animals, large and small, by leaving sea life off their plates.”
More fish are killed for food each year than all other animals combined. Fish feel pain as acutely as mammals, have long-term memories, and sing underwater—yet they’re impaled, crushed, suffocated, dropped into pots of boiling water, or cut open and gutted, all while conscious.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—points out that many faux-fish options are available, including Gardein’s F’ish Filets, Good Catch’s Plant-Based Tuna, New Wave Foods’ plant-based shrimp, and Sophie’s Kitchen’s Vegan Crab Cakes.
The message is running on 35 tall car cards across five boats, on wall murals aboard the Ollis ferryboat and the Sandy Ground ferryboat, and across the Zippertron and on a mural banner in Whitehall Ferry Terminal.
For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
Banner Image:  PETA poster.  Image Credit – PETA

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People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the largest animal rights organization in the world, and PETA entities have more than 9 million members and supporters globally. PETA opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview, and focuses its attention on the four areas in which the largest numbers of animals suffer the most intensely for the longest periods of time: in laboratories, in the food industry, in the clothing trade, and in the entertainment business. We also work on a variety of other issues, including the cruel killing of rodents, birds, and other animals who are often considered “pests” as well as cruelty to domesticated animals. PETA works through public education, investigative newsgathering and reporting, research, animal rescue, legislation, special events, celebrity involvement, and protest campaigns.

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