Trapped in a fishing net with a mermaid tail that blends with her iconic blue hair, ARCH ENEMY vocalist Alissa White-Gluz is embodying aquatic creatures in a new PETA campaign launching just in time for Lent. The ad is meant to remind people that fish are not inanimate objects—they are sentient beings who should be kept off people’s plates throughout all 40 days of Lent and thereafter.
“The first thing that people are ready to … disregard as living animals are sea creatures,” Alissa says in an exclusive video interview. “We’re … invading a completely different environment and just destroying all the inhabitants in it… That’s something less talked about, but it should really be talked about, especially when you look at the statistics that say that our oceans will be dead 20 years from now.”
Fish are capable of feeling pain, can transmit information, possess good recollection, and display certain cultural practices. A few of them even endeavor to attract mates by constructing complex works of art on the ocean bed. However, more fish are slaughtered for food than any other species combined. This is normally done through impaling, crushing, depriving of air, or cutting them open and dismembering them while they are fully alert. Moreover, 38 million tons of other aquatic creatures are unintentionally snared each year to meet customers’ appetite for “seafood.”
