Apparently (and predictably) PETA is upset that the Marlins intend to put real fish tanks behind home plate in their awesome-looking new park.

PETA suggested the Marlins use robotic fish instead of real ones.

This is conflicting for me, and difficult to reconcile with my pro-robot, anti-PETA agenda. It’s the whole animatronic groundhog debate again.

I’m going to side with the Marlins on this one, though — all due respect to robot-fish — for a couple of reasons:

1) According to the HardballTalk story linked above, robot-fish cost about $250K each. Figure they’re going to need at least 10 to fill their tanks, and all of a sudden you’re talking about money that could be redirected to locking up Giancarlo Cruz-Michael Stanton.

2) While robots are cool, actual saltwater fish are awesome. No need to gild the lily. I imagine given a tank full of real fish and a tank full of robot fish, I’d probably check out the robot fish for a while because of the novelty factor, then go stare at the real fish for longer. Look at all the colors! How do they even make fish that look like that? Do they fry well?

Also, just look at how sweet this looks. Beats a brick or stone wall anyday: