Greenpeace UK - Oceans

Stocks crash – massive reserves desperately needed

jossc — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:24:01 +0100

Our oceans are the last global commons, and as such are about as effectively regulated as Dodge City when the West was at it's wildest. As recently as 40 years ago they were considered to be an inexhaustible resource. No amount of fishing could possibly make a dent, it seemed, in the teeming mass of ocean life which constantly replenished itself. It was a one-sided arms race, with increasingly advanced fishing techniques maximizing catches: GPS; sonar; trawl nets big enough to catch a jumbo jet; bottom trawling; fish aggregating devices and open-water 'ranching' are just some of the methods employed to extract maximum profit from the seas.

Many of these methods are so wasteful that as much as 80 per cent of what is caught in the nets gets thrown away. This 'bycatch' - a deliberately vague industry term designed (like the US military's famous euphemism 'collateral damage') to divert attention away from the fact that it involves carnage on an obscene scale - ranges from commercially-valuable fish that are too small or are the wrong species; to 'unwanted’ species like starfish, urchins and coral dragged up from the seabed; to large animals like sharks and turtles. What they all have in common is that as far as the fishermen are concerned, they have no economic value and as such are expendable.

And expended they have been. A new World Bank/UN Food and Agriculture Organisation report estimates that global fish stocks are now so low that only a drastic reformation of the way the world's fisheries are managed can prevent their collapse. Nearly one-third of the world's fisheries are severely depleted, and there have been several high-profile examples of complete collapse, such as the Grand Banks cod stocks off Canada's eastern coast.

This being a World Bank report, of course, the emphasis is less on criticising the insane greed and willful lack of regulation that have led us to this appalling situation, and more on how the international fishing industry can get back to profitability. According to the World Bank's Keiron Kelleher, "Sustainable fisheries require political will to replace incentives for overfishing with incentives for responsible stewardship". Indeed they do, but that's much easier said than done - it would be fair to say that 'responsible' is the last word you'd be likely to apply to the behaviour of most fishermen and the national governments charged with regulating them. The reality is that thanks to massive government subsidies (reckoned to be worth around $30 billion in 2006) the global fishing fleet is at least double the size it needs to be to catch the amount of fish available. Unless urgent action is taken to reduce over-capacity then the scenario of too many boats chasing too few fish will continue until our once fecund oceans are turned into a wasteland.

Fortunately the report has another potential solution up its sleeve. Apparently it has now come to their attention that establishing "no take zones" has been shown to improve fish stocks and biodiversity. A "no take zone" by any other name is, of course, a marine reserve - something that Greenpeace has been arguing for years is the only viable way to give depleted fish stocks a realistic chance of recovery.

The best scientific estimates at this point suggest that as much as 40 per cent of the oceans' surface area would need to become marine reserves, where no fishing or extractive industry (such as oil, gas and gravel removal) is permitted, while the remaining 60 per cent would have to be fished as sustainably as possible by a greatly reduced global fishing fleet. These not only allow areas and species to be protected, they also build in a resilience to the oceans, to withstand stresses and strains to come… To use a banking analogy, creating marine reserves is the way of investing in the future of our seas.

So there is hope, but it's going to require some pretty fundamental changes in the way we use our oceans. And that change needs to happen soon, so that there are some fish left for the marine reserves to protect!

London Sushi Awards ban endangered bluefin

sarah — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 18:06:39 +0100

Entries at the Milan Sushi Awards earlier in the year (image by Thomas Lu, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0)

Working at Greenpeace often means that I find myself in some unusual places - inside a nuclear power station, atop an aeroplane or in a palm oil factory. But I certainly never expected to find myself at an international sushi awards ceremony.

Last year at the annual London Sushi Awards, 7 sushi samurai battled it out to earn the prestigious accolade of creating the 'sushi of the year'. One of these top sushi chefs was later exposed as having used endangered bluefin tuna in their sushi creation. Whilst they didn't actually win the competition (a vegetarian sushi piece was awarded top marks), it didn't reflect well on event organisers Eat Japan.

This year we wrote to Eat Japan in advance of the Awards and were pleasantly surprised when they confirmed that no bluefin tuna would be used this time around. So, when I and two other Greenpeace staffers found ourselves attending the Awards, we came armed not with banners as we expected, but only with our best clothes and some business cards.

Despite the image that you might have of long-bearded hippies in hairshirts discussing the latest innovations in tofu, Greenpeace isn't a vegetarian organisation. Yes cutting down on meat consumption is a good way to reduce your carbon footprint and eating less fish will help conserve dwindling fish stocks but for those of us that don't want to give up fish altogether there are more sustainable alternatives.

One of the sushi chefs - Silla Pernille Bjerrum (head chef and director of the popular sushi restaurant Feng Sushi) - created a sushi dish that I didn't feel guilty about eating. She used line caught mackerel from Cornwall, showing that being green doesn't need to mean compromising on taste. She didn't win but the 'sushi of the year' award went to a creation that didn't even use fish - yes the veggies won again.

Not only has Silla never used bluefin tuna in her own restaurant but she's doing all she can to ensure that she only uses sustainable seafood in all the sushi on her menu. Feng Sushi also looks set to be the latest sign up to our Seafood See Life campaign.

All in all it was a good night's work but it doesn't end here. We'll be campaigning to make sure that the London Sushi Awards keep bluefin tuna off the menu at least until stocks recover and effective management has been introduced. We are also working internationally to get permanent protection for the endangered bluefin - by turning their spawning grounds into marine reserves which will be off-limits to fishing. It's certainly in the interest of sushi-lovers everywhere, and after last night's event I suppose I can count myself as a sushi-lover now as well as an environmentalist.

Opening up the Greenpeace photo library

jamie — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:19:22 +0100

I've mentioned before about how I love wandering through the Greenpeace photo library (it's on a big server, so any wandering is purely figurative) - there's always just one more enticing folder to explore. And it's hardly surprising, when our campaign work takes photographers to some stunning locations and places them at the heart of the action. Some have even won major international awards for their work, both with Greenpeace and independently.

And yet, for a long time we've felt that here on our website we haven't been making as much of this archive as we could have been and despite having this fantastic asset at our fingertips, usually it's only at the top of the story that you'll find a hard-hitting, thrilling or spellbinding photo. Other Greenpeace offices have been doing this for a long time but for some reason, here in the UK we've just never got it together.

To remedy this, we've been working on the first in an ongoing series of slideshows which will feature the latest images sent back by Greenpeace photographers around the world, as well as some of the gems hidden away in the vaults. The full index lives on our main slideshows page, and highlights will be appearing here on the blog. Both Daphne and Angela, our dynamic duo of picture editors, have been working hard on this, as has the diligent Andrea who has been giving up her free time to edit them.

As a taster, here's a set from the recent illegal timber blockade in Papua New Guinea including some of the images taken to document the ongoing devastation of the forests in the region.

Modern art is (made from) rubbish

saunvedan — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:58:43 +0100

It's been an arty week for me. After the polar bear sculptures in the US, an outdoor art group in Devon - Trail Recycled Art in Landscape (Trail) - has made a trawler boat out of 5,000 plastic bags and named it Rainbow Worrier after our legendary ship the Rainbow Warrior. They even filled it up with plastic fish in fishing nets to highlight how plastic is destroying marine ecosystems.

Plastic waste isn't just what you see on beaches and coast lines. A plastic dump in the Pacific Ocean as large as Texas is constantly swirling in a massive gyre that is referred to as the 'trash vortex'. Other unflattering names include Asian trash trail and the Eastern Garbage Patch where six kilos of plastic swirls for every kilo of plankton.

How did so much plastic reach the middle of the Pacific Ocean? Well, 10 per cent of the 100 million tonnes of plastic that is produced each year is dumped in the sea mainly from ships and platforms. Winds and currents keep the plastic from drifting to beaches thus missing out on any chance of being picked up, leaving the plastic perpetually in the vortex.

Of course, plastic doesn't degenerate easily like organic materials and stays in the marine environment for a long time merely breaking into small parts and spreading to other parts of the ocean. The biggest threat is to seabirds and marine animals that eat the plastic mistaking it for food and eventually die as a result. Large numbers of animals also get trapped in abandoned plastic nets and lines.

On top of that, many other pollutants in the ocean are absorbed by plastic poisoning marine life that come into contact - some organisms cling on to floating bits of plastic and spread the toxins to other parts of the ocean. Most plastic eventually sinks to the bottom of the ocean where tonnes of rubbish stifle deep sea creatures. We can do our bit by using as little plastic as possible and recycling whatever we can to prevent it from ending up in the vortex.

The Rainbow Worrier is an excellent example of using art to raise awareness which won Trail the Recycled Art in Landscape Public Choice Award. Who said art wasn't meaningful?

Endangered, but still on the menu

Willie — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:39:18 +0100

Catch them while you can - endangered bluefin tuna © Greenpeace/Gavin Newman

When we said a few weeks ago that customers of the Nobu chain of high-class sushi restaurants wouldn't be aware that the bluefin tuna being served there was endangered, we never thought they would respond to our complaint in quite such a literal manner. But now diners can clearly see which dishes include tuna from endangered stocks because it's written on the menu. As reported in the Sunday Telegraph and as a result of Greenpeace's investigative work and subsequent discussions with Nobu, customers at the up-market eatery will now be able to clearly identify the endangered species on the menu.

All of this comes just after the publication of an independent report slamming ICCAT (the international body responsible for managing stocks of tuna in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean) as an 'international disgrace'. US actor Ted Danson has also leant his weight to the campaign to protect endangered bluefin stocks.

The news from Nobu is that they want to change. We've been told by one of their partners that they will support lobbying for stronger controls on bluefin fisheries, and also look at how Nobu can remove endangered bluefin from its menu.

And not before time. Labelling endangered species on the menu is clearly not enough - they shouldn't be being served up in the first place. This just goes to show how many people just don't realise the perilous state of many of our marine species are in - if endangered mammals like gorillas or rhinos were being served up, it would be unthinkable.

Estimates suggest that the already-depleted stocks of tuna in the Mediterranean are being fished four times more intensively than the best scientific advice recommends, showing what a mockery the current fish stock management system is. A ban on all bluefin fishing in the area is desperately needed until stocks recover and effective management has been introduced. One of the most crucial steps is to permanently protect all known bluefin tuna spawning grounds as marine reserves that are off-limits to fishing.

The ball is now firmly in Nobu's court - and that of other sushi restaurants - to explain exactly what they're going to do to make sure that future generations of customers might have a chance to order some bluefin sushi with a clear conscience.

Just say Nobu

Willie — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 09:48:16 +0100

The Sunday Telegraph reports this morning that, thanks to Greenpeace investigative work*, we now know that London’s Nobu restaurants, among the capital’s favourite celebrity hangouts, are serving up endangered bluefin tuna as sushi.

Not only is this a scandal in itself – like serving up rhino burgers or tiger chops – but it is not even clear to diners what they are eating. The menu certainly doesn't say 'cut of endangered bluefin', nor even for that matter does it even tell you what the species is! It would be like being sold something as just 'a steak' and finding out afterwards that you have just eaten some gorilla. From our own trips to the restaurant the staff seemed at best confused and ignorant about what species they were serving up.

The official response from Nobu on whether they sell bluefin has been a repeated, resounding ‘no comment’. But now we know clearly that they are serving bluefin, it is not labelled as such, and the fish can be traced back to endangered Atlantic and Mediterranean stocks, through their supply chain and the DNA evidence.

What does this mean? It means that the celebrity diners at Nobu, the likes of Madonna, David Beckham and Lily Allen, are unwittingly pushing a species toward extinction. It means that Robert De Niro, co-owner of the restaurant chain seems to be angling for the title of ‘Godfather of ocean destruction’. And it shows that whether you eat tuna from a tin in your supermarket or at the most prestigious London sushi restaurant – you might have cause for concern.

Other restaurateurs have already stopped using bluefin because of threats to the species – even Gordon Ramsay has dropped it from his menu, along with sushi restaurant Moshi Moshi. Greenpeace has even been told by Eat-Japan, organisers of the London Sushi Awards (the world's only sushi championships, due to be held in London on Oct 6th) that they have taken bluefin off the menu this year.

It's high time that Nobu stopped selling bluefin, and let's hope that their celebrity diners let them know that.

* Our researchers obtained two samples from all three of Nobu's London restaurants, along with the retail outlets of their suppliers Atari-Ya. The DNA analysis of these samples was conducted with the assistance of the conservation organisation WWF, and clearly showed that all of the samples which were tested which yielded results were Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus). On Nobu's menus the tuna sushi is not identified by species, but merely cuts of meat such as 'o-toro', 'chu-toro' and 'akimi'.

Paradise saved - for now?

jossc — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:11:27 +0100

Greenpeace divers protesting against the planned oil shale mine

Australia has stepped back from the brink of madness and decided to shelve plans to mine oil shales right on the doorstep of the Great Barrier Reef.

Proposals to extract millions of tonnes of oil shales from the Whitsunday Islands threatened to drain precious water supplies, and to risk toxic leaching and air pollution - as well as increasing Australia's greenhouse gas emissions.

Fortunately, following a strong protest campaign led by the local Save Our Foreshore group, common sense has prevailed and last week Queensland premier Anna Bligh announced a 20-year moratorium, effectively ending the threat for the immediate future.

The ban has been welcomed by just about everyone but the Queensland Resource Council whose proposal was set to mine millions of tonnes of shale rock each year on a site just 10 km from the sensitive ecosystems of the reef (seen from the air at left).

Shale oil production is extremely greenhouse gas intensive – emissions from this project, combined with the company's other planned operations, would have raised Australia's current total emissions by 30 per cent within 20 years.

This is a great win but it is madness that such a project could have even been considered. Faced with catastrophic climate change we urgently need to cut emissions, not increase them. We don't need to endanger the Great Barrier Reef or anywhere else by mining fossil fuels, and there are better energy sources that are ready to go right now. If Anna Bligh can block this proposal for climate reasons, we look forward to her blocking other major fossil fuel projects in the state, including export coal expansions, for the same reasons.

Greenpeace joined Save Our Foreshore in their fight against the shale oil mine last month, when renowned coral scientist Dr Charlie Veron joined our divers in an underwater protest and issued a dire warning about the fate of the reef if the mining plans were to get the go-ahead.

Later the Esperanza sailed into Airlie Beach flanked by a flotilla of 90 local vessels to support SAF as part of its six-week energy [r]evolution tour.

Seafood See Life: help us spread the word!

jossc — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:26:55 +0100

Seafood See Life is our vibrant new network bringing together influential people, organisations and businesses that want to be part of a positive wave of change for our oceans.

If you're a chef, restaurateur or food writer, you can help us spread the word by grabbing one of our banners to use on your blog, website or MySpace page. It's easy, simply copy the code from the text field below the banner you would like display, and insert it into your web page.

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Banner (468 x 60)

John West - still in denial?

jossc — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:26:31 +0100

We already know that John West's website contains plenty of corporate puffery. After all, this is the company that claims to "only purchase fish which is caught with no harm to the marine environment" but which came a dismal last in our sustainability league table of tinned tuna brands. Yes, John West truly is John Worst on tinned tuna.

Their response to our criticism? Rather than tackling the issues, John West have opted for total denial that the use of purse-seining with fish aggregation devices (FADs) is a problem.

Perhaps the company should take a look at a press release (pdf) from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Western Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Council from April of this year, concluding that "bycatch of sensitive species groups, including sea turtles, seabirds, marine mammals and sharks, in purse seine and pelagic longline fisheries, and bycatch of juvenile and undersized tunas in purse seine fisheries, is problematic. Relatively little progress has been made to resolve the bycatch of sharks and whales in both longline and purse seine fisheries, sea turtles in purse seine fisheries, and juvenile/undersized tunas in purse seine fisheries."

John West's response also implies that the company aren't particularly interested in the fate of the world's sharks. A bit of a shame given that, according to the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, who look at just one tuna fishing area, the eastern Pacific Ocean, 31,409 sharks were caught up in purse seine fishing on tuna fishing trips during 2007 (pdf), most dying as a result.

On the same web page, John West claims to be "totally transparent in its approach" and say that they are "still seeking contact" with Greenpeace in order "to gain clarity". As it happens, on the same day as the Tinned Tuna League Table rated John West the least sustainable in the UK, we wrote to the company inviting them to participate in discussions with Greenpeace at their earliest convenience, with phone, email and postal contacts enclosed. In the ten days since, this has been John West's only response:

We think the person you hear on the message is that of Adolfo Valsecchi, the chief executive officer of MW Brands, the private equity group that owns John West, but they didn't identify themselves. Whoever the caller was, he left no number and never phoned back. So much for John West seeking contact with us!

It's official: EU fishing policy is crazy

jossc — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:01:23 +0100

The crew of the Prolific discarding their catch

So at last the sheer waste involved in modern trawling has been captured on camera. Last week a Norwegian coastguard cutter filmed the crew of a Shetland trawler, the Prolific, openly dumping over 5,000 kg of cod and other dead white fish in UK waters. Now this footage is rightly causing a wave of revulsion in the media at the scale of unnecessary waste at a time of rapidly rising food prices and, ironically, when our own Prime Minister is telling us not to waste food.

Such discards are not isolated incidents. They happen routinely all around our coasts, but are almost never documented. They represent a scandalous waste of perfectly marketable fish. The reasons given are many and varied; the fish either are too small, the wrong species, exceed the fishermen's allotted quota, or will fetch too low a price at market. In the case of the Prolific it seems they were discarding tonnes of low-value small (but legally caught) fish in order to fill their quota with higher-value big fish. This time, though, the fact that fish caught in Norwegian sector of the North Sea were dumped in UK waters has outraged the Norwegian government, who released the footage in support of their demand that all fish killed must be landed.

So who's to blame? Current EU policy only sets quotas for fish landed at ports, so fishermen are free to keep trawling until they're happy with the value of their catch, discarding the contents of previous, less valuable trawls. Basically it's a license to 'maximise profit' The EU has been quick to try and characterise this as an isolated event, but ICES, the scientific body which advises the EU on fisheries quotas, suggests that as many as half of all cod and haddock caught in the North Sea are thrown back dead as discards. And the problem is made worse because EU quotas are set for single species, but trawling is an indiscriminate way to fish, so there will inevitably be a large percentage of wasted species caught up in the nets.

Basically the current system is crazy. The only real beneficiaries are the gulls that follow the fishing boats. We urgently need a radical overhaul of the way we manage fisheries, that includes making it a requirement to land all the fish that have been killed, and setting aside large areas as no-take marine reserves where all marine life, including commercially important species, can get some respite from relentless overfishing. The evidence suggests that where marine reserves have been established then, over time, fish stocks begin to recover and end eventually start to thrive again.

The award-winning environmental journalist Charles Clover, in his powerful attack on industrial fishing 'The End of The Line', made the point that if trawling were to take place not at sea, but on land in plain sight of everyone, then it would be quickly banned because the levels of indiscriminate destruction involved are so high that we would all be sickened by the sight. This Norwegian coastguard video has given us just a small taste of what that might feel like and, it seems, we can't stomach it.