Of all the things to eat in this world, why purposefully choose to eat an endangered animal?
That's the question people around the world are asking
after recent footage from an Indonesian fish market began circulating.
An unnamed man was visiting the Tanjung Luar Fish Market in eastern Lombok, Indonesia when he saw something startling:
two fishermen hauling a dead dolphin off a boat and into the market. The men had strung its body to dangle lifelessly from a pole, which they hoisted over their shoulders.
Even worse, the dolphin was just one of the many endangered species up for sale at the market.Endangered sharks and whales as well as protected manta rays lined the floors of the building, waiting for a purchaser to dictate which body-part would be sliced off and sold as meat.
Specific species seen in the man's footage include a thresher shark, which the World Conservation Union lists as "vulnerable to extinction," bullsharks, hammerhead sharks, and a pilot whale, a social species known to roam the sea in close-knit pods of 10 to 20 individuals.
Plundering the last remaining members of these aquatic animals' families is not an acceptable dinner choice. We must not be allowed to drive these irreplaceable species to extinction just to satisfy our bellies.
Demand that the Indonesian government protect these precious endangered species now and shut down the Tanjung Luar Fish Market, before even more dolphins and whales are senselessly slaughtered!