Latest Updates

Onboard stories
April 21: Barbecuing on the High Seas
April 19:Beginners guide to nautical terms
April 12: The Garbologist and the art of garbology

Meet the Crew
Find out a little about the personalities onboard the MV Greenpeace and send them a message.

Illustrated Webcasts

Politics
Greenpeace letters to Governments and recieved responses

ACTION UPDATE: CHEATING THE RULES: Greenpeace calls on all reefers not to tranship from pirate fishing vessels. Saturday, 13th May, 2000

We continue to follow the MV Hau Shen 202, the pirate fishing vessel registered on Belize flag, which we prevented from transhipping its catch to the MV Toyou yesterday. Again we are surrounded by fishing vessels - there are five vessels on the radar (including the Hau Shen 202).

10:40: Tweetie flies out to investigate, returning an hour later.

11:40: Helene, George, Jeremy and I have a look at the footage which Gavin shot of the vessels. There are two Taiwanese vessels, the Hau Shen 236 and the Yu I Hsiang 666. And two more pirates! Chen Fa 736 displays no flag. I Man Hung 166 has EG Malabo written on the bow: (s)he's flagged with Equatorial Guinea.

Equatorial Guinea, although a Contracting Party to ICCAT, was sanctioned for bluefin tuna at the 1999 meeting of ICCAT in Brazil, for failing to observe ICCAT regulations, for example, failing to provide data about catches. This means that there is an import ban on tuna from Equatorial Guinea into other ICCAT Contracting Parties. Bluefin is the most valuable of the tuna species: in recent years, the wholesale price paid at landing for top sashimi-quality tuna has reached more than US$200 per kilogram, with some of the largest, high-quality individual tuna fetching up to US$50,000 a piece.

Of the major tuna stocks in the Atlantic, bluefin is without doubt in the worst condition. The adult biomass of the eastern stock of bluefin is less than one fifth of its 1970 level. Current catches are about twice what the stock can sustain.

Scientists have warned that even under favourable conditions, reducing catches to approximately half the current levels would only stop further declines in the stock: more drastic cuts would be needed to allow rebuilding. A ban on longlining for bluefin during the spawning season in the Mediterranean has been a failure, with longliners flying Flags of Convenience, or no flag at all, continuing to fish. The extent of fishing by FOC vessels, not only for bluefin, but also bigeye and swordfish, means that even strict conservation measures adopted and observed by ICCAT’s Contracting Parties cannot be enough to allow stocks to rebuild if the pirates are not controlled.

ICCAT has implemented some strong and potentially very effective measures in an attempt to curb this fisheries piracy. In 1992 it adopted the first of a series of resolutions to create the Bluefin Tuna Statistical Document Programme with the aim of identifying bluefin which had hitherto gone unreported by either the flag state or the vessel owners. Any bluefin which is imported into a Contracting Party of ICCAT must be accompanied by a document listing the exporting country, the weight of the fish, the area of harvest and other details. Without such a document the tuna must be refused. The importing country (usually Japan) sends a summary of these import data to ICCAT, which can then compare these data to the declared catches of tuna. Any country which exports bluefin to Japan but does not declare the catches, or is not a member of ICCAT, is then viewed, in ICCAT jargon, as “fishing for bluefin tuna in a manner which diminishes the effectiveness of the relevant conservation recommendations.”

In other words, those countries are cheating on the rules…

16:15: We have been tracking the Hau Shen 202 all day and now catch up with her. The MV Greenpeace moves up to port and then starboard of this Belize-flagged pirate fishing vessel to investigate. She seems to lie very low in the water, which would indicate that she must have a pretty full hold. However, not too full to continue fishing - she is now hauling in her longline to starboard.

We can see the crew working away on deck, reeling in the line and rolling up the tracer lines (the shorter lines with hooks, attached to the main longline). Clearly for them, Saturday is a working day, like any other.

If working conditions on board the Hau Shen 202, are as hard as for the crew of the Chien Chun No. 8, they'll be working solidly 7 days a week, having only one month off after a year at sea. 16:20: Tweetie lifts off from the heli deck with a banner in the shape of a big yellow arrow, complete with the pirate flag of skull and crossbones. It reads: "Pirates Here!" and points to the Hau Shen 202, as Tweetie flies in front and behind her. And so the Hau Shen 202 continues to fish in contravention of ICCAT and in full knowledge of its provisions: we delivered a message to her yesterday, (at the same time as we delivered the message to the reefer MV Toyou), informing her that she was fishing in contravention of ICCAT and requesting that she stop.

Greenpeace calls on all reefers to refuse to accept catch from the MV Hau Shen 202 and any other vessel fishing in contravention of ICCAT. Any reefer transhipping tuna from vessels such as the Hau Shen 202, does so in contravention of the provisions of ICCAT. This means that they will undermine conservation measures and contribute to continued overfishing of already seriously depleted stocks of bluefin and bigeye tunas and swordfish in Atlantic and Mediterranean waters.

Can pirate fishing be said to be in any one's interest? The companies that own the fishing vessels, whether pirate or legal? When the last tuna is fished, what will these ships and companies do then? The crews of the pirate fishing vessels? They may be earning a relatively good wage now, comparative to average income in the countries from which they come, but they are nevertheless invariably being exploited by the companies which hire them. And if the crews are being paid for the fish they catch, then the "good times" will be short- lived: wages will decline. When the last fish is fished, where then will the crews turn for their living - ultimately their jobs will disappear along with the tuna.

Other fishermen? The pirates are stealing the fish that legal fishermen are entitled to catch. And what of the livelihoods of local fishermen, and peoples along the coastal states of West Africa?

Lovers of seafood? It takes only an elementary knowledge of economics to understand that demand is already exceeding supply, forcing prices up. This leads to a vicious circle where fish, such as the bluefin tuna become so valuable that companies are willing to break any and every regulation to hunt down the last fish. For fish lovers, fish will increasingly become a luxury for the rich.