Mumbai: Submerged in crystal-clear water, surrounded by a school of exotic fish and wearing an alluring mermaid costume created by renowned designer Ashley Rebello, Czech-born supermodel Yana Gupta appears in a new ad for PETA, urging people to leave the fish in the sea where they belong and go vegetarian.

The ad, which carries the tagline, "Try to Relate to Who Is on Your Plate", explains, "Fish Are Friends, Not Food", and was shot by ace photographer Jatin Kampani.

There are so many delicious and nutritious vegetarian options to choose from these days in every part of the world that there's no need to kill fish or any other animal for food, says Yana, who is vegetarian and avoids dairy products. A vegetarian diet is good for your health, the animals, the environment and your taste buds!

Why do Yana and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) want to make sure that people don't get hooked on eating fish? Fish feel pain and suffer, and those who are caught for food are often impaled, thrown, crushed and mutilated, all while still alive, then left to die slow and painful deaths by suffocation. From the bass, who desperately tries to escape the pain of the hook as he is reeled in, to the mackerel, who tumbles endlessly in a trawler's net, to the tuna, who struggles for hours to free herself from one of the thousands of hooks on a fishing line that measures up to 40 km in length, billions of fish suffer at human hands every year.

It is unthinkable that fish do not have pain receptors; they need them in order to survive, writes Professor Frank Hird, microbiologist from Melbourne University. Dr Donald Broom, professor of Animal Welfare at Cambridge University, adds, "Anatomically, physiologically and biologically, the pain system in fish is virtually the same as in birds and mammals."

In commercial fishing, fish along with unintentional victims such as dolphins, birds and turtles are captured in huge trawler nets and dragged along the ocean floor for hours along with rocks and debris. Pulled from the ocean depths, fish undergo excruciating decompression, often so intense that the internal pressure ruptures their swimbladders, pops their eyes out or pushes their stomachs up through their mouths before they are tossed onboard, where many slowly suffocate or are crushed to death. Others are still alive when their throats and bellies are cut open.

Fish is not health food. Like the flesh of other animals, fish flesh contains excessive amounts of protein, fat and cholesterol. Consumption of animal products has been directly linked to heart disease, stroke and cancer - three of the country's leading killers. Fish and shellfish can also accumulate extremely high levels of toxins upto nine million times that of the water in which they live such as PCBs, dioxins, mercury, lead and arsenic, which can cause human health problems ranging from kidney damage and impaired mental development to cancer and even death. Fish oil capsules may also contain harmful contaminants. Omega-3, thought to be helpful in fighting heart disease, can be obtained through healthy flaxseed and linseed oils and in green, leafy vegetables.

Dangerous chemicals concentrate in the tissues of fish from interior waterways as well as in those from the oceans. According to a March 12 2001 article in 'The Times of India', the Ganga pollution-monitoring project run by Patna University showed that fish taken from the river contained levels of insecticides and other toxic chemicals far in excess of permissible levels including 16,000 times more DDT than was present in the water.

Fish are not the only ones hurt by fishing. Countless birds and other animals suffer and die from injuries caused by swallowing or becoming entangled in discarded fishing hooks, monofilament line and lead weights. In our oceans, billions of non-targeted animals such as sea turtles, dolphins, sea birds and seals die horrible deaths in commercial fishing nets every year.

Aquaculture fish farming in a controlled environment has become a worldwide industry and presents its own problems. Factory-farmed fish are subjected to severe overcrowding and unnatural conditions that spread infection and parasites, often to wild fish populations, threatening their survival.

The verdict is in, and fish-eaters should own up to it. Fish, by the billions, suffer when they are killed for food, says PETA chief functionary Anuradha Sawhney. Traditional Indian meatless dishes are favourites around the world. We can enjoy a delicious diet devoid of disease-causing fat and cholesterol and the animal suffering associated with eating fish and other animals.

For more information and to view the ad, please visit PETAIndia.com.