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'American Monarch' monster trawler

CHILE
Chile says no to
monster trawler

Following a sustained campaign by Greenpeace and others, the Supreme Court in Santiago has backed a government decision to bar the American Monarch fishing vessel from Chile's waters. The ruling sends a clear signal to richer nations looking southwards to find the fish stocks already depleted in their own seas.
In its unanimous endorsement, the court ruled the boat's exceptional capacity could cause 'irreparable damage' to Chilean marine life.
The 100-metre American Monarch, owned by Aker RGI/American Seafood, can catch and process 1,000 tonnes of fish per day - more than any other ship afloat.
Annual Report
   
  

Tuna fish schoolTwo fish. One fish.
No fish

Nearly three-quarters of our commercially-fished stocks have been depleted. Now another of the world's largest and most sought-after fish may be extinct within a generation. For the southern bluefin tuna, time is running out. Today, too many big boats are hunting too few fish. And the deep sea is no refuge.

It lives for up to 40 years. It grows to two metres and weighs up to 200kg. On the Japanese market, a single southern bluefin tuna can command the price of a luxury sports car.
Southern bluefin tuna stocks are being systematically destroyed by the 'longline' fishing operations of Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Taiwan and Indonesia. Today, these stocks stand at just 5 per cent of their 1960 levels. If current overfishing persists, the adult fish population could fall to zero by the year 2020.
As the relentless quest for profit drives the southern bluefin tuna to extinction, Greenpeace is campaigning for a global catch moratorium to protect this spectacular species.
Also at risk is the Argentinian hake, a crucial local resource whose maximum allowed capture has been exceeded for eight years in succession. Following sustained action by Greenpeace, the Argentine Congress passed historic legislation to enforce rigorous quotas.

Plunder for profit
The threat to these and other species is at the heart of a deepening global fisheries crisis. Today, 70 per cent of the world's fish stocks are fully exploited, depleted, or near collapse.
In Chile, Greenpeace has campaigned successfully alongside local unions and with the support of the National Fishworkers Forum of India to bar the American Monarch from regional waters. The action marks a local response to a global problem. Quite simply, there are too many large, hi-tech fishing boats roaming the world's oceans on an unsustainable course of plunder wherever fish stocks can still be found. Although large-scale fishing vessels make up just one per cent of the total fleet worldwide, they account for more than half the world's fish catch.
Greenpeace calls for a halving of the global big boat fleet to avoid the total collapse of fish stocks around the world. Greenpeace presses for a reduction in trawler fleet numbers and cutbacks in hake catch

Empty sea, empty future
Underpinning the sense of crisis is the enormous waste or bycatch of the industri-alised fishing fleet. More than 27 million tons of unwanted fish are caught, killed and dumped back into the oceans every year.
This bycatch problem is scarcely confined to fish. Marine mammals and seabirds are also at risk. In the hunt for the southern bluefin tuna, for example, fishing lines of up to 130km with 3,000 hooks are also killing the endangered albatross and the blue shark in significant numbers.
As we welcome the International Year of the Ocean, Greenpeace will continue to play a vigorous role in safeguarding our marine environment - from protecting species in the deep sea to confronting destructive shrimp aquaculture where sea meets land.