The World Day and the “Another Perspective on Fish” campaign

The World Day for the End of Fishing (WoDEF)

The World Day for the End of Fishing is held the last Saturday of March every year. It calls public attention to the “aquatic question”, that is, the existence of sentient beings whose lives we usually ignore and who are subjected to routine violence. It offers an opportunity to progressive people and organizations to condemn the exploitation of aquatic animals and express solidarity with them.

The World Day exists to reach out to environmental movements and hopes to obtain their support. Fish, cephalopods and crustaceans live meaningful lives and their interests must be defended by campaigns for marine protection.

The World Day provides an opportunity to ask publicly the abolition of the exploitation of aquatic animals, that is, the prohibition of fishing and fish farming. This prohibition will not come in a day. We need to speak out now on how these animals are treated. The aim of the World Day is to attract public attention to the exploitation of aquatic animals in order that this day may come.  

The campaign “Another Perspective on Fish”

The World Day is part of a larger scale campaign entitled “Another Perspective on Fish” which attracts public attention to aquatic animals and demands that an end be put to their exploitation. The campaign was born in Switzerland and France in 2016 and took an international turn in 2017.

It asks animal rights, vegetarian, vegan and environmentalist organizations and citizens to work toward the successful realization of the event by sharing information and organizing media events simultaneously across the world.

(See how to take part?).

The campaign shares information on three aspects:

• Information about the psychological lives of aquatic animals: their sentience, their cognitive capacities, their individual and social behavior
• Raising awareness about the implications of fishing and fish farms in terms of suffering and death for aquatic animals
• Information on ethics, speciesism and the necessity of taking into account the fundamental interests of other sentient beings, and the demand for an end to their exploitation at a social level.

The campaign will assume a diversity of forms:

• The creation of a reference website (under construction; inspired from viande.info) devoted specifically to fish, fishing, fish farming (in English and other languages)
   
• The organization of conferences on aquatic animals, fishing, etc.
   
• The translation across languages of for international dissemination (leaflets, exhibitions, videos, banners and images for social media, etc.). The source files will be freely distributed upon request to any individual or organization.
   
• A 12 panel exhibition devoted to aquatic animals and their exploitation in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, Hebrew, Japanese and Chinese. The source files will be freely available upon demand and freely adaptable for their own purposes and imprinted with their own logos. The exhibition can be seen on the webpages « aquatic animals », « fishing/farming » and "speciesism".
• A call for artists to contribute to the campaign by creating artworks around the “aquatic question”. Artworks will be published on the web and social media.
   
• Legal actions to attract public attention on the plight of animals and reform the law.
   
• Other forms of public action: happenings, protests, interventions in schools, drawing contests, etc.

For every event, we will try to establish collaboration with animal rights, vegetarian and vegan organizations, as well as with environmental groups.

Who are the organizers of the World Day and the campaign?

The association “PEA - Pour l'Egalité Animale” (For Animal Equality) has created the campaign “Another Perspective on fish” and the World Day for the End of Fishing. This association organizes the World Day for the End of Speciesism since 2015, which has fostered events across the world.

The association will put the “aquatic question” at the center of its actions for 2017 in Romandy and proposes that many other organizations attract attention on the floating slaughterhouses that are fishing boats.

This was the focus of the World Day for the End of Speciesism which occurred on August 27th 2016 in Geneva. The Veggie Pride in Paris also targeted this issue from October 2016 onwards. The campaign goes on in many other countries and should become increasingly supported and administrated by a diversity of organizations.

Every individual, every organization is invited to participate in the World Day to End Fishing and the “Another Perspective on Fish” campaign, as well incited to organize events all year long that focus on the treatment of aquatic animals. See how to take part.