Thursday, January 15, 2009

Sea Kittens or Chicken of the Sea?

Oh my!

PETA has introduced a new campaign to call fish "Sea Kittens"--this apparently gives them the charismatic megafuana entitlement they deserve and leaves those of us in the fish world shaking our heads and ordering up another plate of freshly hooked salmon! Really? According to the PETA website, "People don't seem to like fish. They're slithery and slimy, and they have eyes on either side of their pointy little heads—which is weird, to say the least." I beg your pardon. Fish are fascinating, most of them do not slither, and while they may be slimy, they are better off for it! And, apparently the PETA authors haven't seen a Shortspine Thornyhead (Sebastolobus alascanus) because their heads are anything but pointy.


The absurdity of the sea-kitten premise aside, I cannot believe how utterly juvenile the website introducing this campaign is. Who is PETA trying to reach? Perhaps it appeals to squeamish 7 year old girls or maybe I'm overestimating the intellect of the average consumer, but it just seems...well...stupid. And besides, I'm just not a cat lover, even in their cuddly juvenile form!

4 comments:

KSobo said...

It's worth noting that Stephen Colbert did a little riff on this last night (go to 13:45 if you can't watch the whole show): http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=215971
The coining of "land fish" proves that to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Lia said...

I just heard about this on "wait, wait don't tell me" too. They were campaigning for schools with "fish" in the name like Whitefish High School in Missoula, Montana and Spearfish High School in Spearfish, South Dakota to change as well. Hilarious! What genus do you think the Sea kitten will fall into?

jb said...

CNN had the question "would you eat a sea kitten" on their front page! I was wondering what that was all about!

Ellen Stewart said...

I guess cockroach of the sea was already taken...yum, can't wait for my next "sea kitten roll" at Chinoise.