British Columbia's former Environment Minster and Well Known Talk Show Host Rafe Mair has this to say about the controversy:

The decision of the BC Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to have a crab dinner has brought an issue into focus few want to face. I’m sure that many who learned of the opposition of environmentalists Paul Watson and Anthony Marr passed the off as being kind of eco-freaks. But we do that, I think, because we don’t want to face unpleasantness when it’s inconvenient.

The SPCA is having a money raiser and is serving freshly boiled crab. Pays your nickel and hear your own crab scream as it is tossed into the boiling water.

The SPCA would never kill dogs that way so why crabs? An interesting question if you want to honestly face it and find an answer.

Let’s talk about fish for a moment. I stopped killing fish 20 years ago and stopped fishing altogether about three years ago. But when I did kill fish I dispatched them with a “priest”, that delightful name sports fishermen give the blunt instrument they use. I don’t know any sports fishermen who would just throw the fish onto the bank or onto the bottom of the boat and let is suffocate. But that’s precisely how commercial fishermen and fish farmers kill their quarry – by the millions. Yet we eat fish without a thought for the terrible way they died.

We’re told that cattle are bonked on the head and that it’s humane – is that they way you will choose to die?

All of us turn our minds away from unpleasant things as I do writing this just before I head out for a plate of mussels. But Paul and Anthony have me thinking – what about you?

Rafe Mair is a member of the Sea Shepherd Board of Advisors