When it comes to photographic evidence of how brutally marine animals are treated and killed before they end up on your plate, we’ve got plenty.
Through multiple undercover investigations on numerous driftnet fishing boats, Mercy For Animals exposed horrific and blatant animal cruelty in the commercial fishing industry.
Driftnets, often called death nets, can hang 100 feet into the ocean and stretch the length of the Golden Gate Bridge. These nets routinely trap and kill an immense amount of marine life, including dolphins, whales, sharks, and sea lions. And for every one targeted fish caught by the driftnet fishing industry, about seven other marine animals are killed.
Take a look:
1. Worker holding a bloody, sawed-off shark’s head

2. A swordfish with his bill sliced off

3. Thresher sharks being finned

4. An entangled dolphin dead in a driftnet

5. Mako sharks being viciously cut apart

6. A finned, strung-up thresher shark being hit in the head with a baseball bat

7. The head of a swordfish being sawed off

8. A partially finned thresher shark left for dead on a fishing boat

9. A stingray caught in a fishing net

10. Dead dolphins being cut out of a driftnet

11. A dead baby mako, a vulnerable species of shark

12. Workers repeatedly bludgeoning sharks over the head with a baseball bat

13. A dead sea lion who drowned in a gillnet

14. An opah caught in a gillnet and hooked in the mouth

MFA’s brave undercover investigators risk everything to shed light on the horrors animals endure every day.