Latest News - Misc. 2007

US lobster fishing is killing off whales - Sunday Times - 16.09.07

US lobster fishing is killing off whales.  The northern right whale, which
once ranged the Atlantic Ocean from Britain to America, is on the verge of
extinction, with only 400 remaining from numbers that might have been
hundreds of thousands, scientists have found.  Although the animal has been
protected from hunting since the 1930s, the population has failed to
recover, puzzling scientists.  It now seems that the whales are hit by ships
or get tangled in fishing gear off America's eastern coast.  Michael Moore
of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who carried out the research
said 'Fatally entangled whales can die very slowly' and other researchers
said that about 300 of the remaining animals bear serious scars from being
tangled in fishing gear, usually lobster pot moorings.

Marine life in peril as protection law is delayed - Daily Telegraph - 08.10.07

Marine life in peril as protection law is delayed.
Rare species such as the sea horse and pink sea fan are being destroyed
because of a delay by ministers in introducing a marine Bill, warn
conservationists.  Although the Government is obliged, under a convention
signed at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, to establish protected marine areas by
2010, it has admitted in a white Paper that this will not happen until at
least 2020.  There is already all-party agreement that a Bill is urgently
needed and the legislation was among Labour's manifesto commitments. The
Wildlife Trusts have been campaigning for 15 years for better legal
protection for the sunset corals and pink sea fans of Lyme Bay, Dorset,
which have been smashed by scallop dredgers despite the existence of a
voluntary ban on dredging.  The trusts are sending a report to all MPs which
says that 90% of people polled by Mori believe that in circumstances where
sea life is threatened by commercial fishing or dredging, priority should
lbe given to protecting nature. Some 76% of the public believed there were
fewer fish in the sea than 20 years ago. Some of the species at risk include
the tompot blenny, the grey seal, the jewel anemone and the saithe, a
relative of the cod.

Lobsters feel pain - 08.11.07

Lobsters feel pain, says a new study reported in UK newspapers, including The Daily Mail, The Express, The FT, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Mirror and The Metro. Lobsters and other crustaceans such as crabs and prawns are boiled alive every day in restaurants and homes across the country. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/2007/11/08/shellfish-feel-pain-89520-20078884/

The evidence that lobsters - and many other invertebrates - have the capacity to suffer already exists in science and common sense, and while we welcome any additional evidence, it's profoundly frustrating that it's still thought to be needed. Lobsters have pain receptors like humans and mammals do, and they respond to what should be painful stimuli in the same way as mammals do. Occam's razor points anyone with an open mind at the conclusion that of course they feel pain. Animals should always be given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to suffering - if there's any question that they can feel pain, we should treat them as though they do. That's a pretty sound moral prinicple, to go with the scientific principle, and in the case of lobsters, we know they feel pain.

In practice, animal welfare laws which apply to sheep, cats and birds, should at very least apply to lobsters too, as well as other invertebrates like crabs and cuttlefish. No boiling alive, no breaking their claws or limbs. Shellfish Network will be pushing for the forthcoming European directive on animal experiments to include lobsters for the first time too. Lobsters may look alien, and not be cute and cuddly like puppies and kittens, but they should be animals with the right not to have pain inflicted on them, just like dogs, horses, tigers and the rest of us.