Naked Celebrities Get Friendly With Fish

ORIGINAL: FastCoExist

A campaign to stop overfishing features photos of celebs in their birthday suits, cuddling up with marine creatures to draw attention to overfishing. It’s safe for work, unless your boss hates fish.

Here’s a lesson in PR. Do you have a cause? Okay, good. Now, find attractive people, make them take their clothes off, and photograph them styled with some totem symbolizing your mission. Articles (like this one) and buzz are the natural output. We can’t help it.

Apologies for the sarcasm, but mixing sex with activism never seems to die as a strategy, and perhaps because it works--see PETA. The more outlandish the better: case in point, the photo campaign Fishlove, which paired topless models and actors with squid, starfish, and crabs--some of which are overfished--in an attempt to raise awareness about the devastating effects of the fishing industry on marine life. And so, thanks to that vision, we get to see naked Ben Kingsley, Lizzy Jagger, and a host of other celebrities (some only celebrities if you’re British) holding aquatic life.

Lili Loveless

"Scientists predict that all marine life will effectively disappear from our oceans by the middle of this century if nothing is done about over-fishing," reads the Fishlove site. "The people in these photographs want over-fishing to stop." Viewers are asked to pledge their support for Ocean2012, an advocacy group working to enshrine more sustainable fishing practices into law in the E.U.

Lizzy Jagger

A collaboration between Ocean2012, online grocer Waitrose, and sushi restaurant Moshimo in Brighton, U.K., the sexy images help the bleak facts at the heart of the campaign go down a bit more easily. In the Mediterranean, 82% of fish stock are overfished. In the North Sea, 93% of cod are caught before they reproduce. Many once thriving species, including Atlantic bluefin tuna, could go extinct due to overfishing.

Ocean2012 is working toward a comprehensive overhaul of the EU’s fishing policies that would end overfishing and create a framework for fishing policies based on the needs of ecosystems, not the market. Find out more about their work here.

Ben Kingsley

Eleanor Mills

Emilia Fox

Jerry Hall and Lizzy Jagger

Jerry Hall and Lizzy Jagger

Lenny Henry

Lizzy Jagger

Richard E. Grant

Terry Gilliam

ZAK STONE

Zak Stone is a writer and editor in Los Angeles and a co-founder of Tomorrow Magazine.Continued
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