While Arctic Sunrise was out in the North Sea protesting against the over-fishing of cod, the Rainbow Warrior's been in the Mediterranean keeping an eye on the bluefin tuna situation. Tuna 'ranching', where wild bluefin are caught in sea-pens and fattened for sale is one of the Med's most profitable industries - growing explosively since the late 1990s in response to increasing demand for Japanese-style sushi. This in turn has provoked a 'gold rush', with legal quotas being totally ignored as pirate fishing boats seek to hoover up every last bluefin in the Sea.
Where have all the tuna gone? Read our report
Find out more about tuna ranching
What have the crew of Rainbow Warrior uncovered?
The biomass (amount by weight) of bluefin in the Med is now estimated to be barely a tenth of what it was 20 years ago - a situation so bad that the official regulator, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) , stepped in with a supposed 'recovery plan' designed to restrict pirate fishing and allow tuna stocks to recover. It's this plan that Rainbow Warrior has been monitoring over the past few weeks. So what's the verdict? You'll be shocked to learn that nothing has changed: unlicensed vessels are still fishing; spotter planes are still hunting the remaining tuna schools despite being banned; and transhipments (transfering fish between vessels at sea - one of the main ways illegal catches are laundered) are as common as ever. Mediterranean bluefin are still being hunted to extinction against all the available scientific advice. And because the ranched tuna are carnivorous, they're fattened on smaller wild fish, which in turn are being massively over-fished themselves.
The only long-term solution is to declare large areas of the Med off-limits to all fishing vessels to give stocks of all species time to recover. Marine reserves have now been established successfully around the world in Calfornia, across Micronesia and in New Zealand, and regeneration has followed. The same needs to happen in the Mediterranean - urgently, before it's too late.
