glaucus / CC

In a perfect world, lobsters and crabs would be able to do their deep sea thing without being preyed upon by humans hell-bent on turning sea life into seafood. Unfortunately, we live in a woefully imperfect world in which crustaceans are routinely boiled alive or cut open while they are still conscious. That's why we're hoping that the Crustastun will catch on.

A less cruel method of slaughter, the Crustastun uses a low-voltage current to instantly render crustaceans unconscious and to kill them within five to 10 seconds. I don't think that I need to tell you what a huge improvement this is over the three minutes of pure agony that lobsters suffer though when they are cooked alive!

Thrown into scalding-hot water, lobsters and crabs will fight so hard against a clearly painful death that their claws often break off in their struggle to escape. Lobsters are unique and fascinating animals who are not that different from humans. Like us, they carry their young for nine months and have a long childhood. Using complicated signals to explore their surroundings, they establish social relationships, take long-distance seasonal vacations, and can live to be more than 100 years old. Also like us, they experience fear and pain.

According to invertebrate zoologist and crustacean expert Dr. Jaren G. Horsley, lobsters have a "sophisticated nervous system" and feel "a great deal of pain" when cut or cooked alive. And because lobsters do not enter a state of shock when they are injured, a lobster feels every moment of his or her slow, painful death. Dr. Nedim C. Buyukmihci, a professor of veterinary surgery, states that it "would be inappropriate to do something to lobsters that you would not consider doing to conscious dogs, cats, or humans."

Which brings me back to the Crustastun. Knowing that this method will spare our crustacean comrades untold agony, we recently reached out to Tucson's Child & Family Resources concerning its upcoming annual lobster dinner fundraiser. Last year, another organization reached out to the event's organizers and tried to get them to dump the lobsters from their menu. The organizers refused, but this year we convinced them to allow to us to provide them with a Crustastun to use. The inventors of the Crustastun will be on hand to train the staff in how to use the device, which is easy to operate and guarantees the lobster a quick and painless death. And while we don't condone this event and we hope that the organization's future fundraisers will not include harming animals, we're glad that we can at least help reduce the suffering of these lobsters.

After all, it's about making a positive difference in an imperfect world …

Posted by Amy Elizabeth

Tourists are flocking to Kiryat Yam, Israel, in hopes of spotting a mermaid who has reportedly been seen frolicking during sunset swims, and the Town Council is offering a $1 million reward for anyone who can provide a photograph that proves Ariel's kin are kicking back on local beaches.

If it's a photo of a mermaid they want, we'd be happy to oblige. We're offering to run our stunning "Make a Splash—Go Vegetarian" ad, which makes the case that, like mermaids, fish sea kittens, lobsters, crabs, and other animals of the sea deserve to be treated with compassion and respect.

If you would shun a plate of poached mermaid, why not let Nemo and his buddies off the hook too?

Posted by Alisa Mullins

msn / CC

Last night we learned that City Crab and Seafood in New York City was attempting to sell a 140-year-old, 20-pound lobster to customers for dinner. We immediately contacted the restaurant and spoke with Manager Mitchell Rosen. Rosen let us know that they are unsure what their plans are for the lobster (they may keep him in his tank and "spare him" death), but have refused to hand him over to PETA to be released back into the ocean. Whatever happened to respecting your elders? And—you know—not eating them?

Because of the lobster's sophisticated nervous system and high sensitivity to pain, boiling lobsters alive is completely illegal in some cities, such as Reggio, Italy (where offenders face a $600 fine!). But, unfortunately, more than 20 million lobsters are killed and eaten every year in the U.S. alone.

Even if City Crab takes the lobster off the menu, by keeping him in captivity they are likely sentencing him to death. Because lobsters are sensitive to water quality, they easily die if too much waste is created in their environment. In order to prevent the lobsters' excrement from contaminating the tank water with ammonia, merchants normally do not feed lobsters, so the animals often starve or are reduced to attacking each other.

This lobster lived in the ocean for over a century, and we think he deserves to spend the remainder of his life in peace in his natural habitat—not in a pot of boiling water or a cramped, dirty tank. Since City Crab needs some persuading to release the supercentenarian lobster, we've contacted its parent company, Branded Restaurants USA. Hopefully the executives will show some compassion for this 140-year-old survivor! You can check out our full letter here.

Posted by Liz Graffeo

Update: I just heard from my friend Harald at PETA Germany that the kind soul who rescued the lobsters is a PETA Germany activist! So, if you’re reading this, anonymous German lobster-liberating activist: Danke! From der bottom of mein heart.

It’s been a good month for lobsters. Well, insofar as it’s possible to have a good month when your people are routinely boiled alive and made into bisque. Let’s call it a “slightly better” month than usual. First, a study published in New Scientist proved what we all know already: that lobsters feel pain (scientists are sometimes a bit slower to catch on than the rest of us—they are a methodical people). And now, there’s news from Stuttgart, Germany, that dozens of lobsters escaped from an Asian supermarket out into the street, where they were rescued and sent to an animal sanctuary. Here’s how our good friends at Der Spiegel described the incident:

“The clawed crustaceans, some of them up to 15 centimeters long, managed to crawl out of their crates, which had been poorly secured with wire mesh, then scurried across the floor of the supermarket and squeezed through the metal shutters covering the front of the store. The front door had been left open by mistake.”

Congratulations, lobsters! We’re all pulling for you. We’re all pulling for you. And for more on this story, Stephen Colbert, ladies and gentlemen:

People will cling on to the most unlikely notions if it means that they can keep doing something they enjoy but know deep down is wrong. And sad as it is to say, there are going to be people who continue to ignore or deny the fact that crustaceans feel pain despite mountains of evidence that this is the case—including the study published in New Scientist today, which shows that lobsters, crabs, and other crustaceans all share pain sensitivity. Which means (just in case anyone needs this spelled out) that cramming them into pots of boiling water while they’re still alive should be a jailable offense. Literally. We prosecute people for equivalent cruelty to cats or dogs, so a lobster bake shouldn’t be any different.

Setting that aside for a second, I hate the fact that this study was ever done in the first place. The notion of a bunch of grown men and women in labcoats prodding lobsters to see if they react and then pompously announcing to the scientific community, that “yes, they do react,” would frankly be laughable if it weren’t for the fact that these animals suffered to prove what we all know intuitively already: That there’s something horribly wrong with the way we treat these animals, and that no matter how much someone might enjoy the taste of lobster, there is simply no way to justify torturing a living being for the sake of a palate preference.

If you haven’t read it yet, you should definitely check out the essay Consider the Lobster, by David Foster Wallace (who happens, incidentally, to be my favorite living author). It’s a fascinating analysis of the ethics related to this issue from the point of view of someone who had never given it any thought at all, until he was assigned to write about a lobster festival for Gourmet magazine. You can find that here.