Dogs and Cats Used as Shark Bait

By isak, May 26, 2009

This morning, I received a link to a petition demanding an end to the practice of using dogs and cats as shark bait. Geez, that we even need to object to such heinous behavior is an atrocity. This behavior should not even exist.

The petition was first signed on April 22, 2009. The goal is 100,000 signatures. Currently there are ~ 3400.

One of the links from National Geographic was originally printed in 2005, so I am not sure if this is still a problem on France’s Reunion Island or perhaps this particular situation has been addressed. Here is the report from snopes.com, also from 2005:
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Based on a Réunion newspaper article which acknowledged the practice and reported the recent prosecution of a deliveryman (and amateur fisherman) on that island over animal cruelty charges associated with the described activity, we’d have to say there is some truth to the shark-fishing claim, although the practice does not appear to be as widespread or horrific (or tolerated) as implied by some news stories. Rather than describing hordes of shark fisherman impaling live dogs on hooks and dragging them behind boats as shark bait, the article notes that employing dogs in shark-fishing is largely the province of a small group of amateur fisherman rather than large numbers of professionals, that the dogs used are generally dead animals picked up from roadsides or culled from the island’s large population of unwanted strays (estimated at 150,000), and that the no-longer-alive animals are attached to unattended buoyed “shark trap” platforms rather than dragged alive behind boats.

But there is more to the petition. Included in the same Care2 petiton is a link to a YouTube video of “Kittens Being Used as Live Shark Bait” with the subtitle “wealthy americans using live kittens to fish for sharks.” I do not have it on me to watch the video. I don’t want the images seared into my brain for all time. I am speechless, hurt, angry, disgusted, pissed off and more. The video was uploaded in 2009, so you can be assured that somewhere in this world, there is still a callous and selfish lot continuing this cruelty.

I signed the petition. Your support on this petition is important. Please sign it and send it to your friends for them to sign.

By the way, is it too much to wish the same treatment on the people in the video as they did to the animals?

7 Comments

  1. Alyssa says:

    I need there number. Please I know how to fix it I need any of there numbers

  2. Dianna Reed says:

    I am disgusted with this practice of using live dogs and cats (any live animal for that reason) as bait. People should be fined and jailed for torturing animals and there should be strict penalties for this crime. These people are gutless and cowardly to exhibit this kind of sickening crime.

  3. ashley neiman says:

    that is so horriable.. how would you like to be skewred alive and drug behind a boat to cathch a sharkk ass’s… you should suffer the same fate as they did.!

  4. cassie says:

    it is fair that animals need to eat other animals to live as nature with follow, but to think that human life will have such little careless of the ones that we call PETS.
    i have seen lots of website and im counting on everyone to help, please do all you best to help our pets from a horrible tradgety that they think is normal even if they have been dead on the side of the road or a while whats it to them to think its fair to take that animal think the owners put up lost signs of there dear dog jake when his all ready been chewed to bits by an animal that dosnt no any better as said shark, most of the time it is live cats and dogs and sometimes killed, but mostly live that cant ind it way back home 🙁
    why have these cats and dogs been culled anyway to be on the sides of the roads, its not always that you see many dead animals on the side of the road so most have to be live my 2 questions are…

    why are there culled cats and dogs on the street anyway? where have they come from?
    why do people need to have sharks?

  5. hillary mcalpine says:

    YOU KNOW THAT, THAT IS SO CRULE AND THEY DONT EVAN CARE. I JUST HOPE THAT ONE DAY THEY HAVE THERE LIFE TAKEN BY SOMEONE DOING THIS TOTHEM.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;(

  6. Alyssa Perez says:

    STOP DOING THIS TO THESE POOR ANIMALS.
    🙁

    NNOOOOOOWWWWW!

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