A Celebrated Death and Why There's No Seafood in a Shark

I spent some time catching up on the Huffington Post's recent animal stories this afternoon and came away both heartsick and fuming (a rare state for me, I know).

Did you hear about the 663-pound hammerhead who was caught and killed off the coast of Florida last month? If so, forgive me for repeating the story; I hadn't heard until just today. Commercial fishermen (read: profiteers from the destruction of the oceans and the mass, indiscriminate killing of its inhabitants) dragged from the ocean a stunning, magnificent, 663-pound, 12-foot hammerhead shark. I don't know the exact details of how they caught and killed him (though I can guess), but what I do know is that it was a needless, senseless killing. What I do know is that humans' response to it--the media's response especially--was unfortunate and wrong. Because embedding the video isn't working out so well for me, go watch it at Huffington Post and then come back here for the discussion. Go on--I'll wait.

. . .

OK, now let's deconstruct some of what the  MSNBC reporter had to say. First, "the hammerhead is not known for its seafood, but its fins are valuable." Wow. At least we're not pretending we think this animal has any intrinsic value beyond the money we can make off killing him and slicing him into pieces. At least we're not pretending to care that he had a life once, that he had thoughts, that he had relationships with others of his kind, and that he suffered a cruel, premature death for no reason. It's quite clear that his life was worth only what parts of his body can now be sold for, that his life was meaningless and his death merely a matter of profit and pride-in-the-kill.

But you know, the last time I checked, neither hammerhead sharks nor any other fish species were made of "seafood." The hammerhead couldn't possibly be "known for its seafood" because sharks don't have any seafood in them. Fins? Check. Heart? Check. Eyes? Check. Brain? Check. Seafood? Where exactly in a shark's anatomy is that? "Seafood" is a human word for the flesh of a dead animal humans intend to eat. "Seafood" is not anything that belongs to, or is found in, an animal.

But as this shark's lifeless body was hoisted into the air by a forklift in the news video, with passersby gleefully looking on, the reporter couldn't even give this animal the respect of acknowledging that this scene she was narrating still featured a complete, recently living being--even before his "valuable" fins were sliced off and his body gutted so that someone could stuff his corpse and hang it on a wall, she was already referring to him as nothing more than "seafood," nothing more than the dollars for which his body parts would be sold.

And that is so very sad.

This story, including some other remarks from the reporter, leads me to want to talk about something else involving our attitude toward wild animals too, carnivorous wild animals in particular; keep an eye out for that post tomorrow.

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Update: That promised post appears here.