Senseless Slaughter

* On Sept. 23, Seal Beach officials sponsored what they called the “Great Stingray Fishout.” After determining that the stingrays are an inconvenience to tourism and recreation, the city came up with a solution: a mass killing.

As part of this event, the captured stingrays were dumped alive and piled on top of one another in the bottom of a trash can (without water), where they were allowed to slowly die over a period of hours. I believe this treatment, in addition to being cruel, is a violation of California law, which is a criminal offense.

It should be understood that we are but occasional, very short-term visitors to the stingrays’ home. Is it right to slaughter animals in their own environment simply because we have deemed them a nuisance?

An additional disgusting aspect of this event is that there is a simple and quite effective solution, which is the act of shuffling your feet when walking in the water. I recently spoke to a lifeguard who has been working this beach for 10 years and has never been stung. Yet the city makes no effort to educate people. They don’t hand out educational pamphlets at the parking lot adjacent to the “problem” beach, and there are no signs to teach people about the stingrays and how to deal with them.

But the city does have another solution, and that is to promote the suffering and slaughter of these animals.

RAYMOND V. OJA

Yorba Linda