It’s been a rough week–hell, it’s been a rough year. Fellow humans are fighting for their lives, both in hospitals and on the streets in the wake of the brutal murder of George Floyd. And we’ve gotten our first glimpse inside a factory farm that was forced to mass-exterminate pigs because of slaughterhouse shutdowns due to workers contracting COVID-19.
I’ve spent the week trudging through the desolate headlines, taking action for our Black family and friends where I can, and soaking up tips to become a better ally. As an animal advocate, I must also be a human advocate. Animal oppression is rooted in the same oppressive system that kills Black and Brown people, and our work won’t be done until we’ve addressed all of it.
Over the last few months as the world seems to be topping down around me–and especially now–it’s been hard to find a time to write an inspiring story about animals that feels meaningful. So I’ve stagnated in my writing while waging on with other forms of social justice activism.
The truth is that there’s not going to be that perfect moment, as the flaws in our society keep bubbling up to the surface: cruel factory farms and slaughterhouses that serve as breeding grounds for disease and keep farmers and workers trapped in an exploitative cycle, systemic racism etched into the fabric of the very force that’s supposed to protect citizens of all skin colors, and constant reminders that the powers-that-be care more about profits and economic activity than immigrant, elderly, non-white, poor, and animal lives.
At some point, though, I have to take a breather and find comfort in the world–if only to help refuel me to get back into battle. So, during those brief minutes, I figured we could all use a dose of snuggly puppies.
And these very special puppies happen to live in the sea.
Back when cruises were a thing, my friends Jonathan Rosenberry and Maureen Cohen Harrington had the opportunity to hop aboard the Holistic Holiday at Sea, an all-vegan Caribbean cruise centered on plant-based eating and wellness.
There, in the glittering teal waters, they encountered soft, cuddly beings eager to embrace them with their massive flapping wings. These beings can only be described accurately as floppy, curious, silly puppies–of the sea.
Their actual name is, of course, rays, a group of cartilaginous fish comprising more than 600 species. Unfortunately, more than 500 of these species are on the IUCN Red List, threatened by human fishing.
Like all fishes, rays are remarkably intelligent, adaptable, and innovative. The behemoth manta ray, whose wingspan can reach nearly 30 feet, was documented in a 2016 study to use a mirror to check out body parts that this animal normally can’t see. Individuals were also fixated by their reflection as they furled and unfurled their horn-shaped mouth fins repeatedly. While we should take care not to use such anthropocentric measures like the use of mirrors as definitive metrics of animal intelligence, we can at least appreciate these results as fascinating yet limited glimpses into complex minds we are barely beginning to understand.
Despite their clear sentience and complexity, though, these fish are violently killed by the thousands for human food and medicine–often even being cut apart into pieces while still conscious because their enormous bodies don’t fit onto boats.
But perhaps such research can lead us to reassess our propensity for ripping these rays–and other fish–en masse from their oceanic homes. In response to the 2016 study, a student blogger at the University of Washington wrote, “If manta rays are self-aware, what about other fish and shark species? Have we been underestimating them all along? For years humans vainly believed we were the only ones with higher-order intelligence. Maybe it is time to take a step back and give our wild counterparts more credit.”
Close to my home, another fight has been unfolding for the past several years over the much smaller cownose ray. Every May, these gentle rays migrate to the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, where females give birth to a single live pup after an 11-month-long gestation period.
As the rays arrive to labor over their long-awaited newborns, fishermen armed with arrows lurk, preparing for an annual killing contest. They don’t discriminate, often shooting pregnant rays and babies alike. Until three years ago.
In 2017, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan signed a bill into law placing a moratorium on the savage killing contests through July 2019, during which time the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) was to develop a ray management plan.
Yet the DNR failed to do so in time, necessitating further protection for cownose rays upon the expiration of the moratorium. Thus, activists from the Save the Rays Coalition banded together and successfully achieved an extension on the moratorium until a management plan is created.
But it’s been a full year, and there’s still no sign of a more permanent ban on cruel ray killing contests. It’s time to demand that cownose rays are shielded once and for all from being mercilessly hunted as part of a twisted competition.
Even amidst multiple national crises, sea puppies have managed to warm my heart ever so slightly. Join me in making sure they’ll have a safe harbor in the waters of our Bay for years to come.
Petition closed with 226 signatures.
Many years ago I was given the opportunity to pet rays as I would a cat or dog. It was an extremely enlightening experience to witness their sentience as once lightly stroked, whilst just below the surface,they would repeatedly circle to repeat the experience of being touched again.
What an amazing experience!
There’ll NEVER be human rights and social (or any other) justice without animal rights – their right to humane treatment and happiness. The link between animal cruelty and violence against (among) humans is indisputable. Human beings are incapable to rule themselves in any remotely just manner and co-exist peacefully. Unfortunately vast majority of those people who are oppressed and exploited by their fellow human beings are not concerned about animal suffering at all as are those who violate their human rights.
No animal rights – no human rights. Only human consumers can stop the horrific, heinous cruelty to animals by factory farms, the slaughter industry, wool and leather industries, entertainment, tourism, so called science which tortures animals in laboratories in useless experiments when superior non-animal testing methods are available.
Now, how can we persuade all “good” people to understand it?
“As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will NEVER know HEALTH or PEACE. For as long as men massacre animals they WILL kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.”
– Pythagoras (?570 – 480 BC/BCE) Greek mathematician & philosopher
Christina, I see what you’re saying, but I would argue the reverse is also true – that as long as we oppress and enslave members of our own species, animals can never receive justice either. And there are so many oppressed people just worrying about their own survival that they don’t have the luxury to fight for animals like we do. We can recognize that the same systems of oppression that abuse animals and slaughterhouse workers are also responsible for killing and silencing black and brown people. We can’t coopt their struggle, though, for another cause. It is theirs, and it is time for us all to embrace that black lives matter, period, without adding other classes of beings into that statement.
Hi Laura,
are you familiar with the saying “Trickle Down Economics”? It was/is the believe that when the government gives the incentives in form of huge tax breaks to the wealthy, huge businesses and corporations they will share their wealth with all their employees and the middle class will prosper as well. It did not work, the rich got richer, the poor got poorer and the middle class disappear. That’s the same with the trickle down compassion. If it would work, as you are asserting it does, it would happen decades ago, hundreds of years ago, even thousands years ago, but it didn’t. The heinous atrocities committed by “people” against all sentient beings and destruction of our planet are unprecedented; one of such despicable, atrocious examples of human cruelty is the industrial farming which is only booming because of insatiable appetite for meat, dairy, and eggs, of people of any social class, any race, any nationality. Please read the fallowing sayings of venerable sages whose wisdom was tested by time and confirmed by reality, yet is ignored by self-destructing humanity.
“As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will NEVER know HEALTH or PEACE. For as long as men massacre animals they WILL kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain CANNOT reap joy and love.”
– Pythagoras (570 – 480?BC/BCE) Greek mathematician and philosopher
“I think ’twas slaughter of beasts that first stained the steel of man with blood.”
– Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106 – 43 BC/BCE) Roman statesman and orator
“For I tell you truly, he who kills, kills himself, and who soever eats the flesh of slain beasts eats the body of death.” – Jesus Christ, The Essene Gospel of Peace
(taken from the Dead Sea Scrolls).
“If you have men who will exclude ANY of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who WILL deal likewise with their fellow men.”
– St. Francis of Assisi (1182 – 1226) Italian Friar, founder of Franciscan Order
“From an early age I have abjured the use of meat; and the time will come when men will look upon the murder of animals as they look upon the murder of men. He who does not value life, does not deserve it.”
– Leonardo Da Vinci (1452 – 1519) Florentine painter, sculptor, architect, engineer
“Do not fancy that you will lower yourselves by sympathy with lower creatures; you CANNOT sympathize RIGHTLY with the higher unless you do with those.”
– John Ruskin (1819 – 1900) English essayist, critic, and reformer
“I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a WHOLE human being.” – Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865) 16th President of U.S.A. 1861 – 1865 (assassinated)
“The greatness of a nation and its MORAL progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
– Mahatma Gandhi (1869 – 1948) Hindu national leader
“We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. TRUE humanity does not allow us to impose such suffering on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it! Until we extend the circle of our compassion to ALL living thing, humanity will NOT find peace.”
– Albert Schweitzer (1875 – 1965) German protestant clergyman, music scholar,
philosopher, physician, received the Nobel Prize for Peace on October 30, 1953
“Until we have a courage to recognize cruelty for what it is – whether its victim is human or animal – we CANNOT expect things to be much better in this world.” – Rachel Carson
Laura, first we have to be responsible and compassionate consumers to be whole human beings and for humanity to be true, and it has to come from people of all races, nationalities, and both genders….only then we all be equal; right now we are united by despicable indifference to animal cruelty and destruction of our planet it’s causing. Thank you.