Dogfish Day!

 The Dogfish

It was just a normal morning. The Dog and I were on our usual mission of a good walk out along the coast followed by a quick swim for me. However, today as the sea retreated it left a Dogfish (Scyliorhinus canicula) on the shoreline. All of a sudden a large #puppy flew past me so excited by finding the Dogfish. The Dog’s owner tried to catch up and retrieve the already dead fish and after much running and calling the Dogfish was returned to the #beach. It was natural the dogs could smell the fish and instinctively interested in it and hardly surprising that one #animal would try to eat another. Nature can be harsh as we all know but there was no malice in the dog’s reaction. For one thing, the puppy had a look in it’s #eyes of sheer #joy and #exhilaration at finding such #treasure!

When I got home I read up a little on the Dogfish and discovered #humans are not excited by Dogfish. The poor Dogfish is hugely undervalued as a specie. Apparently, it has little #commercial value as #food because it’s not very tasty and requires some work to prepare it. This seems so sad that a specie gets judged purely on it’s significance to us at the top of the food chain. The Dogfish is held in such low regards that they have been found on the beach with their mouths badly torn by the rough removal of the fishing hooks. How upsetting is that to think that when something has no value it gets treated badly. If we take a step back and remember that the Dogfish is actually a member of the Shark family would we treat it with more respect?

It is so hard trying to progress with a debate around animal cruelty as I can sense my own hypocrisy since despite trying to source food and clothes ethically considerable harm will be occurring to other species. Where do we draw the line? Times are changing and seeing the Dogfish today helped me once again take a moment to consider our relationship to nature. A simple sketch of a disregarded specie makes me want to try a bit harder at addressing this imbalance. Sometimes just to have been noticed can give meaning to all our lives. To be ignored, unnoticed or disregarded because we have no worth to other.