100 Trucks Let Pacific Coast Highway Travelers See Seals in a Surprising Way
For Immediate Release:
July 12, 2022
Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382
As people travel up and down the Pacific Coast Highway on the 1,500-mile stretch between Los Angeles and Seattle, hoping to see seals, they are far more likely to spot one or more of 100 trucks carrying an urgent message from PETA: Fishing and eating fish are responsible for killing millions of “nontarget” animals each year, including elephant seals in California and harbor seals in Washington.
There is one way to do your part to save seals—and even whales, turtles, and other marine animals—the ads suggest, and that is by ditching fish fillets and crab claws and instead choosing vegan foods. Approximately 640,000 tons of fishing gear—some of which can take 600 years to break down—are left in the ocean every year, and “ghost nets” become death traps for any living, feeling beings who become entangled in them. As levels of lost and discarded fishing and trapping gear increase, hundreds of thousands more marine animals will die in horrible ways.
Fishing gear kills far more marine animals than plastic straws do—and we’re not even talking about the billions of fish pulled out of their ocean home to suffocate or be gutted while still alive on the decks of fishing boats.
“Just off the magnificent Pacific coast are countless seals, fish, and other animals who—just like humans—want to live in peace and raise their young,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA urges everyone to honor these aquatic families by recognizing the damage and death caused by eating fish and choosing delicious vegan seafood instead.”
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’sh filets, Good Catch’s plant-based tuna, New Wave Foods’ vegan shrimp, and Sophie’s Kitchen’s Plant-Based Crab Cakes.
For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
