PETA India Earth Day Billboard Blitz Highlights the Marine Victims of Discarded Plastic Fishing Gear

For Immediate Release:

19 April 2022

Contact:

Hiraj Laljani; [email protected]

Radhika Suryavanshi; [email protected]

Panaji – 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 – enters oceans every year, killing over 250,000 turtles who get caught in it.

A copy of the billboard ad is available upon request.

PETA India’s billboard in Panaji is located at Panaji Market. Billboards have also been erected in Chennai, Kochi, Kolkata, 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.

PETA India – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview – offers a free vegan starter kit packed with tips, recipes, and more. For more information, please visit PETAIndia.com or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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