Posted by jossc — 30 September 2009 at 1:51pm
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The crew of the Esperanza, still out patrolling the Pacific against the overfishing of tuna, just sent us this video update. They have been monitoring and confiscating fish aggregating devices (FADs) where ever they come across them. FADs are still being widely used by tuna fishing
fleets throughout the Pacific Ocean - despite their use being illegal for
most nations over the summer months.
Posted by jossc — 3 September 2009 at 10:29am
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It's only a couple of days since the Esperanza set out on the Defending Our Pacific Tour, but already the crew are deeply engaged in the
fight to save Pacific tuna from decimation.
Tuna are the main target of industrial fishing fleets from Asia, USA and the EU. Between them
they took over 2.5 million tonnes last year alone - a totally unsustainable amount. And the indiscriminate nature of their fishing methods
means that thousands of sharks and turtles also die needlessly in their nets.
Posted by jamie — 18 December 2008 at 4:03pm
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Our podcast has skipped a month, but then with the Rainbow Warrior gracing our shores things have been a tad busy around here of late. As you may know, she was here in October as part of the international Quit Coal tour, and we went to meet some of the Greenpeace supporters who came to have a look round during the open boat days.
Also on our radar was the recent Indonesia tour undertaken by that other Greenpeace ship, the Esperanza. I was lucky enough to be there and while the crew were busy painting and blockading palm oil tankers in Sumatra, I was able to talk to them about what it's like being in the middle of a major piece of direct action.
And you'll have to excuse my froggy throat in the introduction, there's a cold going around the office.
An update from Indonesia: yesterday, the climber occupying the anchor chain of a ship carrying a cargo of palm oil was brought down, arrested and later released without charge.
Yesterday, we also received the intriguing photo above (later chosen by the BBC for its day in pictures). As it took us in the office a while to get our heads around what was happening, I thought I'd pass on Jamie's explanation:
The small (wet) figure above is a crew member of the Greenpeace ship Esperanza. Darkness has fallen on the port of Dumai (Indonesia) since this photograph was taken several hours ago, but our climber is still there, in the dark, occupying the anchor chain and preventing the tanker from setting off to the Netherlands with its 27,000 tonne cargo of palm oil. As Jamie wrote on the Forests for Climate blog, it takes only one person to stop a giant palm oil tanker.
Posted by jamie — 5 November 2008 at 4:09pm
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It's been a little while since I've updated here about the Esperanza's Forests for Climate tour of Indonesia, but continue it most certainly does. For our exploits crossing from one end of the country to the other and our stop in Jakarta, catch up on the Forests for Climate blog.
But we've arrived in Sungai Pakning, a small port on the coast of Riau in Sumatra, and the Esperanza is anchored in a wide, silty channel running between the mainland and two islands, Pulau Bengkalis and Pulau Padang. The soupy water flowing gently past the ship will be down to the Siak river, the mouth of which is just a few miles south.
Posted by jamie — 22 October 2008 at 11:09am
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As the Rainbow Warrior sweeps into town, here on the other side of the planet the Esperanza is sailing through the warm waters of the old Spice Islands. We left Manokwari on Monday and are currently en route to Jakarta, slipping past bewitchingly exotic names such as the Ceram Sea, Buru Island, the Halmahera Sea, Selat Sagewin, the Banda Sea... I could go on.
If you're trying to place these exotic names, you could do worse than download the Google Earth layer which is tracking the progress of the Esperanza through Indonesia (you'll need to install Google Earth first, of course, but there's a plain map version below). I'll be posting highlights from the tour there, and it will update automatically so check it often for the latest stories, videos and other titbits from our expedition.
In this edition of our podcast we bring you far-flung forest news from Indonesia, where Jamie reports from the Esperanza on the 'Forests for Climate' tour, plus another Amazon update from James. But first, closer to home, nuclear campaigner Nathan Argent gives Greenpeace's reaction to the news that the government tried to fix another public consultation on new nuclear power, and ponders the implications for UK energy policy.
