Week 7: Reflection Blog

1. SMC Reflection

The SMC has helped me learn about the problems and solutions facing my species because it forced me to do research everyday to learn about them. Also because we had to do 3 tweets every day it allowed me to find a variety of different problems and solutions that I had not thought about. Some of the problems that I had learned about was:

1. how fish farms are negatively affecting lobsters

2. how climate change is negatively impacting the populations of lobsters

3. how lobster fishing practices are impacting whales

4. how lobster traps are threatening Maine's lobster industry

5. dismemberment of lobsters and crabs

6. boiling lobster alive when they can feel pain

7. lobster fishing traps polluting the sea

A problem that I think is most important is the fact that lobsters are being torn apart and killed. This is an important problem because they are only being treated like this because of the demand by our consumption. Some evidence that I can include in my essay to prove that it is an important problem is the fact that recent studies have proven that lobsters and other crustaceans feel pain therefore it is inhumane and unethical to kill these unconsenting being in the way that they are being killed.

Some solutions that I found for this problem was basically by organizations like PETA that offer petitions to pledge not to kill or consume these animals. Ultimately, these solutions are not feasible unless the government steps in to restrict the sale of sentient beings.

Besides PETA, I also learned about the Gulf of Maine lobster foundation & National lobster hatchery. I can definitely use the Gulf of Maine lobster foundation in my essay to help define the problem of lobster fishing trap pollutions that is widespread in Maine. This organization works to get rid of the waste and pollutions in the sea and currently has recovered millions of pounds of waste from the Maine coast alone. I think the two tweets that I liked the most were:

My infographic: This problem is a big problem because of the increase in demand of seafood as fisheries are expected to grow. I might be able to insert this info graph when I talk about the harmful practices of the fishing industry.

2. Making Arguments

From the three videos this week I think I can incorporate the idea of speciesism in connecting that to the the sentience that lobsters experience. I also think I can talk about the idea of full rights versus an item of property as many humans think that they can jut exploit other animals for profit, disregarding their individuality. I like how Peter Singer and Gary Yourofsky presents the moral and ethical arguments. Gary Yourofsky, specifically presents his arguments in a way that conveys the pathos, however his points about how we all try to be moral and that we a lot of the time realize the problems, but never do anything to fix them really resented with me. As he says, allowing it to continue just enables the problem to become even greater. If people change their individual actions and maybe stop animal abuse then we might be be able to see into the eyes of other animals.