What does the word ‘marine’ mean to you? Great Schooners billowing across a blue ocean? Blue whales breaching or scooping up huge swathes of plankton? Or a myriad of lifeforms competing in an environment of extremes? Maybe that is exactly the point. It is a world of differences, places of wild imagination, where the intricacy of life is interwoven in a seething mass at the mercy of a moving medium – the sea.
In this underwater world there are some unbelievable lives: animals thousands of years old, those that live without light, those that crawl or burrow or grow like stone. Throw into the mix a crustacean – an animal adapted to every foible of an angry ocean. Living stages of their life as a planktonic species so tiny only visible under a microscope but a vital feed for an apex predator such as a whale. To juvenile species edible to tiny fish and finally to a moulting animal having to change their shell as they grow. A shell as important to them as our own skeleton is to us – but as an exo skeleton – needed and perfectly adapted to the changing ocean. Their backbone on the outside.
Decapod crustaceans are vital to the health of our planet
People are generally wary or scared of the unknown. This is totally natural and as it should be. We should rightly be wary of walking into an unknown dark place. But we also as a species need to be open to learning. Decapod crustaceans were historically viewed as ‘rocks with legs’; no feelings; a bizarre alien whose primary role was to nip your toes.
But times change, and we now know that decapod crustaceans – animals like prawns, crabs, and lobsters are vital, not just to the ocean, but to planetary health. Our health. They feed on organic debris, filter the sea water, clean corals, help grow kelp forests and sea grass beds, feed multiple ecosystems and support communities steeped in ancient culture - they have even been placed on Roman shields and in Greek god mythology. They can live under water, tolerate air, climb a rock, climb a tree, catch food for their young, lose and regrow a limb, travel continents, and live for centuries. If you look, you will not be scared, you will be filled with wonder.
And now we also know they are not just rocks with legs – but sentient animals – capable of complex thought, of feeling pain, of feeling joy, of forming relationships, of suffering. We should be celebrating these discoveries and doing everything in our power to support this species to thrive and aid our own existence.
It's time to stop exploiting these fascinating animals
Crustacean Compassion has been working to this effect – working to raise awareness, improve our understanding by definition and knowledge, to protect them and us. Importantly, and as a consequence of Crustacean Compassion's work, there is now a widening recognition by those in science, in the seafood industry, and in political circles that they are no longer an animal simply to be exploited for our own needs and to our own ends. That their protection as a species within the natural environment and as individuals when in the ‘hands’ of human beings needs to be paramount. It is or should no longer be acceptable to practice fishing techniques that destroy their natural habitats, to release refuse and sewage into the sea decimating breeding colonies and generational populations of animals. It is no longer acceptable to decapitate a live animal, to boil them alive, to put them into a package to be delivered by post, to be frozen alive, or to tear them in half or pull off their limbs whilst alive simply to extract meat.
Crustacean Compassion works in all areas where decapod crustacean welfare is compromised; promoting sustainable fishing techniques, protection and restoration of key habitats, as well as addressing the mechanisms ‘adopted’ by the food industry, and the legal basis behind them. It is a long and complex task needing multiple research-led engagements and interventions. It is challenging but wholly worthwhile.
As the ocean demonstrates to us the complexity and reliance upon multiple ecosystems, it is down to us, those who wonder on the marine world, who recognise these innate links between our own survival and those of our fellow species, to demand change. Change that places the welfare of individuals, and the welfare of entire populations and of groups of species at the forefront of all human endeavours. Crustacean Compassion does this – can you?
Dr Ben Sturgeon, CEO
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