Bluefin

Here’s a question which has cropped up from some supporters about our work on tinned tuna.

‘Why are sharks, turtles and rays more important than tuna?’

The crews of the Arctic Sunrise and the Rainbow Warrior have once more come to the aid of Atlantic bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean. Although the fishing season has ended early because the quotas have been reached, there are still large cages out there filled with fish caught over the past couple of weeks. These cages are bound for tuna 'ranches', where the fish will be kept and fattened up, before being slaughtered.

Yesterday afternoon our activists again tried to free the endangered tuna from one of these cages.

Earlier today, the Greenpeace team in the Mediterranean made another attempt to free bluefin tuna caught by the purse-seine fishing vessels. The good news is nobody got hurt this time, but the bad news is that - despite a brilliant effort - they weren't able to release any tuna.

As you can see in the slideshow above, the Arctic Sunrise got close to a Tunisian tugboat towing a net cage, into which caught tuna are transferred and towed to a tuna 'ranch' where they're fattened up ready for slaughter. Lowering a cutting grapple from the deck of the Sunrise, activists tried to cut through the netting; meanwhile, the towing rope between the tug and the cage was cut by the crew of an inflatable.

Unfortunately, the fishing crews reacted quickly, launching their own inflatable and managing to put guards on the cage. So no bluefin tuna freed this time but the fishing season still has a week to go...

Greenpeace took action in the Mediterranean yesterday to stop some French purse-seiners catching bluefin tuna. And it's fair to say, things kicked off a bit.

At long last, the weather had calmed down and the sea had warmed, and whilst the seas here certainly are not brimming with bluefin, we knew the seiners were sniffing some potential catch. When we saw them coming together at lunchtime we raced to the scene with both the Rainbow Warrior along with the Arctic Sunrise, our not-so-secret second ship in the Mediterranean.

When we got to the scene we quickly worked out that there was a net with some fish, so we deployed immediately to set about freeing the tuna. We knew it would be complicated, there were seven fairly big purse seiners, some support vessels and a whole heap of skiffs and inflatables working with the seiners. The smaller boats were holding the net open whislt the bigger boats were circling to try and protect the catch. Meanwhile a transport cage was being towed towards the scene for the tuna to be moved into. We knew we had to act fast.