Latest Updates
May 23: Belize fines pirate vessels
19 May: An equatorial baptism

Updates Index

Onboard stories
April 27: Teeny turtles and school kids
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

UPDATE: TO EAT OR NOT TO EAT (FISH), THAT IS THE QUESTION Tuesday, 30th May

There's a lot of tapping going on around the MV Greenpeace today: continuing maintenance work on the ship now that we're in port. A team of divers with members from action teams around Europe have also taken this opportunity to train in and around Las Palmas harbour over the past few days. It's also time for a crew change: some crew members have already left, while others are on their way or have already joined the ship for the next journey and campaign.

Those of us remaining are helping in the preparations for the next leg of the journey and taking the opportunity, in our time off, to spend some time on land, exploring and getting lost in Las Palmas, which is a maze of streets that all seem to look the same! Some of us have snatched a few hours on the beach in Las Palmas, or chatting in cafés along the sea front, although it cannot be said that we were soaking up the sun: the skies are still overcast.

Eating out in Las Palmas presents some questions for the environmentally aware or good-intentioned, namely what to eat and what not to eat. Seafood restaurants are to be found in abundance along the sea front and in the heart of the town. And of course, Las Palmas is a port where many pirate fishing vessels stop and offload their catch.

Greenpeace is calling on all nations to close their markets to Flag of Convenience-caught fish and fish products. At the moment it is virtually impossible to know where the fish served up on your plate in a restaurant or bought in your local market or supermarket comes from and who caught it. On our Atlantic voyage, we have seen that reefers such as the MV Hatsukari and MV Toyou are prepared to tranship tuna from pirate and legal fishing vessels alike. The tuna and other fish is then mixed up in the holds, with no way of knowing whether it has been caught in accordance with conservation measures or not. How then can fisheries be effectively managed? Buyers cannot reject fish that is caught by pirate fishers and consumers cannot make informed choices about what they eat.

The question of what to eat or not to eat, applies not only to tuna. Nine of the world's 17 major fishing grounds are in serious decline (United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organisation 1995).

Our chief mate, Ken does not eat any seafood. He will only eat farmed food and vegetables. In his view, we are destroying the oceans by needlessly emptying the seas of their resources and should only eat fish where this is essential for our survival or part of a traditional way of life. In many cases, we do not need to eat fish and have other food sources available to us.

For those of us who would still like to eat fish, it is to be hoped that flag of convenience fishing will be eliminated, that in the meantime buyers will reject fish unless it is caught according to conservation measures and that the necessary information will be made available to enable us to make informed choices about what we eat, as consumers.

In this context, with respect to marine fisheries and mariculture, several guides on consumer choices have been disseminated. The most recent ones include the guide to seafood published by the Living Oceans Program of the National Audubon Society of the United States and the seafood guide published by the Monterey Bay Aquarium of California. The former covers 34 species with ratings ranging from those available in sufficient quantities for human consumption to those whose stocks are at a dangerously low level. The Monterey Bay Aquarium, under its Seafood Watch program, lists 11 species that it calls best choices, 14 that are potential problems and 15 that are better avoided; these last include cod, American lobster, monkfish, orange roughy, Chilean sea bass, shark, prawn, swordfish and bluefin tuna. This list was prepared on the basis not only of population conditions, but also of considerations of impacts on habitat, risks and bycatch. However, certain reservations have been expressed by seafood companies and trade associations.