Cape Town, Monday February 27th 2006: After spending 73 days at sea defending the whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, the Greenpeace ship MY Esperanza is preparing to set sail again, this time to turn world attention on the plague of pirate fishing (1). Every day, in every ocean, pirate fishing boats are stealing fish and leaving a trail of environmental destruction in their wake.
Greenpeace and the Environmental Justice Foundation are working together to expose the pirate fishing fleets that operate without sanction across the globe. Together the international environment and human rights organisations are demanding that governments close ports to ban pirates, deny them access to markets and prosecute companies supporting them.
Globally, pirate fishing could be worth anywhere between US$4 billion and US$9billion a year - 20% of the total fish catch. It is estimated that pirate fishing just in sub Saharan Africa is worth US$1billion dollars annually, while in the waters of the Southern Ocean, up to 50% of the valuable Patagonian Toothfish may come from illegal activities. Further north in the Baltic Sea 40% of the cod caught in 2002/2003 is estimated to have been taken illegal.
In the Atlantic Ocean alone, pirate vessels cash in on the lucrative market for tuna, taking thousands of tons of fish, in complete contravention of international regulations. The fish are then transferred to refrigerated cargo ships, known as reefers, "laundered" through legal ports and sold on into the market.
"Pirate fishing of Atlantic tuna is just one example of a global problem in every ocean and with almost every type of fish." said Sebastian Losada of Greenpeace Spain. "Fish on dinner plates around the world are stolen from someone else's ocean, denying them food and income. It is a hidden crime that governments have the power to stop now."
The impact on fish stocks is matched by the devastation of marine life through pirate fishing. Reeling out lines sometimes 100 km long with tens of thousands of baited hooks, the pirates also snare turtles, sharks and seabirds. Millions are thrown overboard dead or dying as unwanted bycatch every year.
The Esperanza sails to the Atlantic just days before the ministerial level High Seas Task Force (2) meets to announce how it plans to further discuss the problem of pirate fishing.
" Five years ago governments agreed an International Plan of Action on pirate fishing - what's left to discuss?" said Helene Bours of the Environmental Justice Foundation. "Governments need to stop talking and start acting. Closing ports, markets and prosecuting companies will rid the oceans of pirate fishermen - it is simply a matter of political will, not further debate."
Notes
(1) Pirate fishing is Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) fishing.
(2) The OECD High Seas Task Force, which is made up by fisheries ministers from Australia, Canada, Chile, Namibia, New Zealand and the UK, will meet in Paris on March 2nd & 3rd.
The drive to make piracy history is the second leg of a 14-month global expedition "Defending Our Oceans", the most ambitious ship expedition ever undertaken by Greenpeace to expose the threats to the oceans and demand a global network of properly enforced marine reserves covering 40% of the worlds oceans. Already 45, 000 people have become Ocean Defenders to echo the call. Greenpeace aims to gather a million Ocean Defenders by the end of the expedition in February 2007.
Visit oceans.greenpeace.org
