Greenpeace stops the trading of endangered species

Posted by bex — 23 April 2008 at 5:47pm - Comments

Time and tuna are running out

You'd probably find the idea of an event for trading in rhinoceros horns or tiger skins pretty shocking. But today, 1,600 companies from 80 countries came together in Brussels to trade all sorts species, including some threatened and endangered ones: fish, also known as our global marine life.

The Brussels Seafood Expo is the world's biggest sea food trading event, where species on the brink of collapse - like Mediterranean bluefin tuna and North Sea cod - are, literally, served up on a plate.

So 80 Greenpeace volunteers braved the smell and went along to the expo to close down business, locking themselves to stands and covering them with fishing nets. Banners in 13 languages told the traders that 'time and tuna are running out' and, by taking over the sound system, our volunteers explained that stalls - including the one belonging to the world's largest tuna trader, Mitsibushi - had been closed down.

Thanks to bottom trawling, purse seining, longlining, and other destructive fishing methods, the world's oceans are in crisis. Some two-thirds of fish stocks are either fully exploited or overfished and many stocks are on the brink of collapse. Going sustainable, we told traders, is the only way to ensure your business - the world's marine life - has a future.

Our international website has more about today's events, including a slideshow. And please help protect our oceans - part of the Earth's life support system - from fishing by calling for 40 per cent of the world's oceans to be turned into marine reserves.

 

Update 28/04/2008: A video of the Seafood Expo - more details on our Making Waves blog:

 

Article tagged as: brussels, direct actions, oceans, overfishing, tuna
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In an April 24th opinion piece in seafood industry magazine Intrafish, Drew Cherry asserted that "Greenpeace's Brussels Seafood Show stunt won't work."

Here, Greenpeace International Ocean's Campaigner Nina Thuellen explains why our Oceans campaign, in conjunction with those of other campaigning NGOs, is starting to have a significant impact:

In fact, it has begun working already. The article starts off by saying: “Most of you have already heard by now, or read on IntraFish, that Greenpeace made a little visit to Brussels yesterday.” Clearly, Greenpeace reached its target audience – the seafood industry. Hearing back from industry sources that ‘Sustainable tuna fishing and Greenpeace is now the talk of the ESE (European Seafood Exposition) and I expect we will soon see initiatives from the big tuna players in this direction’ and from government officials that they hope that people will now understand that RFMOs are not working, shows that we are indeed on the right track.

Greenpeace is a campaigning organisation. This means that taking non-violent direct action is part of the way we work. Drew Cherry describes Greenpeace as undertaking ‘ineffective and outmoded 60s-style activism’. I dare to say: the sustainability movement we are currently seeing in the seafood industry would be nowhere close to where it is without Greenpeace’s non-violent direct actions - best remembered by what IntraFish titled as the 'roof top protests.'

This is a key instrument for Greenpeace - but it is just one of the instruments we play and there are many instruments making up the orchestra pressing for change. For me Wednesday of last week ended with a short meeting with the EU Commissioner on Fisheries, to explain Greenpeace’s concerns over the state of global tuna stocks and tuna fishing. Greenpeace campaigners (the ones that were not arrested) were at the same time busy working the exhibition halls speaking to companies from their countries to give them more details about what the actions were about and what Greenpeace is asking for. Back at home, our campaigners will continue to discuss the sustainability of tuna and seafood products in general with retailers and seafood processors.

Meanwhile, WWF, Oceana, MCS, IUCN, North Sea Foundation to name just a few, are all involved in their own way in the push for sustainable seafood. What we see today is the music from the instruments in this orchestra playing together.

Greenpeace has constructively contributed to the meetings of the WCPFC and ICCAT for several years and will continue to do so in the future. We provide data on IUU fishing vessels and overfishing from our own observations at sea, and we produce reports distilling current research. But we will also use peaceful confrontation to name and shame those who are taking too much from our oceans – destroying marine life and the livelihoods of coastal communities dependent on these fisheries for their basic protein.

Greenpeace will also be speaking at the Bangkok tuna forum. We invite industry representatives and government officials to meet us there to discuss ways to reverse the decline of tuna populations – and ensure a future for the industry and world’s favourite fish.<

<
As is often the case, our actions at sea and in Brussels follow years of research, dialogue, and constructive engagement. But Greenpeace will not just sit back and watch or talk about the plight of global fish stocks while many of them approach commercial extinction and marine ecosystems are degraded. We will take action from the furthest reaches of the high seas to the halls of the great seafood shows. The fishing industry may not know it, but Greenpeace may be one of their best friends. By forcing the industry to pay attention to the state of our oceans and marine life today, Greenpeace may just be the organisation making sure they have a reason to remain in business into the future. Makes you think, doesn't it?

By jossc - 29 April 2008 at 2:00pm

In an April 24th opinion piece in seafood industry magazine Intrafish, Drew Cherry asserted that "Greenpeace's Brussels Seafood Show stunt won't work."

Here, Greenpeace International Ocean's Campaigner Nina Thuellen explains why our Oceans campaign, in conjunction with those of other campaigning NGOs, is starting to have a significant impact:

In fact, it has begun working already. The article starts off by saying: “Most of you have already heard by now, or read on IntraFish, that Greenpeace made a little visit to Brussels yesterday.” Clearly, Greenpeace reached its target audience – the seafood industry. Hearing back from industry sources that ‘Sustainable tuna fishing and Greenpeace is now the talk of the ESE (European Seafood Exposition) and I expect we will soon see initiatives from the big tuna players in this direction’ and from government officials that they hope that people will now understand that RFMOs are not working, shows that we are indeed on the right track.

Greenpeace is a campaigning organisation. This means that taking non-violent direct action is part of the way we work. Drew Cherry describes Greenpeace as undertaking ‘ineffective and outmoded 60s-style activism’. I dare to say: the sustainability movement we are currently seeing in the seafood industry would be nowhere close to where it is without Greenpeace’s non-violent direct actions - best remembered by what IntraFish titled as the 'roof top protests.'

This is a key instrument for Greenpeace - but it is just one of the instruments we play and there are many instruments making up the orchestra pressing for change. For me Wednesday of last week ended with a short meeting with the EU Commissioner on Fisheries, to explain Greenpeace’s concerns over the state of global tuna stocks and tuna fishing. Greenpeace campaigners (the ones that were not arrested) were at the same time busy working the exhibition halls speaking to companies from their countries to give them more details about what the actions were about and what Greenpeace is asking for. Back at home, our campaigners will continue to discuss the sustainability of tuna and seafood products in general with retailers and seafood processors.

Meanwhile, WWF, Oceana, MCS, IUCN, North Sea Foundation to name just a few, are all involved in their own way in the push for sustainable seafood. What we see today is the music from the instruments in this orchestra playing together.

Greenpeace has constructively contributed to the meetings of the WCPFC and ICCAT for several years and will continue to do so in the future. We provide data on IUU fishing vessels and overfishing from our own observations at sea, and we produce reports distilling current research. But we will also use peaceful confrontation to name and shame those who are taking too much from our oceans – destroying marine life and the livelihoods of coastal communities dependent on these fisheries for their basic protein.

Greenpeace will also be speaking at the Bangkok tuna forum. We invite industry representatives and government officials to meet us there to discuss ways to reverse the decline of tuna populations – and ensure a future for the industry and world’s favourite fish.<

< As is often the case, our actions at sea and in Brussels follow years of research, dialogue, and constructive engagement. But Greenpeace will not just sit back and watch or talk about the plight of global fish stocks while many of them approach commercial extinction and marine ecosystems are degraded. We will take action from the furthest reaches of the high seas to the halls of the great seafood shows. The fishing industry may not know it, but Greenpeace may be one of their best friends. By forcing the industry to pay attention to the state of our oceans and marine life today, Greenpeace may just be the organisation making sure they have a reason to remain in business into the future. Makes you think, doesn't it?

By jossc - 29 April 2008 at 2:00pm

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