why you shouldn't eat prawns

Did you know that for every tonne of prawns caught in Australian Prawn Fisheries over three tonne of other animals are caught? These include coral, turtles and at least 3 species of endangered shark.

Could you imagine if for every cow that was killed, a horse, dog, and giant panda went along with it? I'm pretty sure the beef industry would have to look pretty hard at itself and its slaughter practices. But sharks are just fish, so who cares?

The reason this happens is the method of catching prawns. Instead of targeting the species they want, they just run a huge cage along the bottom of the ocean floor and scoop up everything that happens to be there. Its extremely inefficient and environmentally damaging.

We're all part of the same ecosystem, and this matters. So if you can't give up prawns all together, try to only buy farmed prawns.

Save the Whales?

Save the Whales! It's like the catch phrase of the Animal Rights and Conservation movements. And we should save the whales right? They're endangered aren't they?

Now don't get me wrong there are good reason's to be anti-whaling. It does take a whale around half an hour to die when its caught. But are they actually endangered?

Well some are that's for sure. The Sei and Blue whales are both considered endangered by the IUCN, but they aren't typically the kind that people go whaling for. The Japanese scientific whalers target Minke whales. A species listed as least concern on the IUCN redlist. Yet we are all terribly concerned with them taking them out of what are international waters.

How exactly is the Japanese whalers any different to any other person who hunts for a non-endangered species. Here in Australia will kill eastern grey kangaroos by the thousands for commercial use, and we become very defensive if anyone should criticize us for doing so.

Like I said I am certainly not pro-whaling. However, I just feel that before we get up on our high horses about the issue, we should perhaps look a little closer to home at conservation or animal rights issues that could use our attention more instead of jumping on the bandwagon.

Organisations that have large anti-whaling campaigns are very good at manipulating the public. They highlight the fact that whales are endangered (though like I already said, not these ones) or they make stories about caring mothers and their helpless young.

Maybe we should try to not be manipulated so easily, and actually look into an issue before we take offense to it. Anyone remember Bonsai Kittens?

What this blog is about

We always hear about conservation issues involving cute and cuddly animals like the Tasmanian Devil and their facial tumors or the Giant Panda. Campaigns to save the whales draw in lots of money from concerned people, but very rarely do we hear about conservation issues involving things like fish or reptiles.

People don't really care about the depletion of the ocean, fish aren't like us so why should we care about them?

I want to give a voice to these issues. I'll also talk about current campaigns running that I think need peoples attention, but hopefully I can get more people worked up about issues that don't get a lot of press, and then we can make a difference.

If you care about biodiversity and the environment this blog is for you.