Fit for the future

Fit for the future

We stand with everyone who wants healthy oceans for our children, who want marine life to thrive and the fishing industry to give jobs and a future for millions. We will be part of the movement that works to create and protect clean seas that bring life to our planet.

Healthy oceans can fight many impacts of climate change.

Ocean sanctuaries, also known as marine reserves, teem with life,  their waters are healthier and better able to resist or absorb the impacts of climate change. Climate change is altering the very nature of the oceans, changes in water temperature are causing species to move to warmer or cooler waters and in some parts of the ocean damaging the building blocks of the food web. Powerful sea currents that regulate our weather are changing dramatically and the ice is melting at an increasing rate in the Arctic and areas of Antarctic.

Scientists warn the subsequent rising sea levels will flood low-lying land and wipe out entire islands in our lifetime.  Healthy bodies are better at fighting disease and it is the same for the oceans.  Find out how.

Letting science and common sense determine how many fish we can catch instead of allowing greedy industries and politicians to decide would end overfishing overnight! 

Well, maybe not overnight, but a lot faster than we are now. Overfishing is the most obvious example of the worst kind of management of our natural resources. The experts already know there are too many boats chasing too few fish. Even the world’s favourite fish – tuna – is at risk.

The fishermen know it too, but rather than slow down, the majority of fishing companies are still netting and hooking faster than the fish can reproduce and we are already driving entire populations to collapse.  Once one stock is gone the boats simply move on to the next one. Modern technology has given us the capability to explore the ocean far more than ever before, but it has also equipped massive boats to search out fish stocks in the far reaches and depths of the oceans that, until now, nature had kept off limits. There is an imbalance. We are slowly exploring and learning about our oceans, while at the same time as the rate of exploitation accelerates, meaning that we may be destroying species before they have been discovered and described. So how can we bring back the balance?

Let’s make piracy history.

Unfair fishingis a polite way to talk about pirates and cheats, who sail without licenses, without regulation or accountability, often in African waters and the Pacific.

And it is not just the masked sailors at sea who are stealing food from poor communities; it’s the company bosses on land as well. Greenpeace is naming and shaming the pirates and, with your help, can cut off their markets. Ending piracy starts here.

Knowing how your fish is caught and at what cost to other marine life, is as important and which fish and where it is landed.

Bycatch is a technical name that in reality means an appalling, unnecessary waste of ocean life. Fishing companies often only want one or two particular species to sell. But their nets and trawls catch anything in their way.  More than 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises are caught and killed in nets every year. Turtles, sharks, other unwanted fish are trapped and then just shoved over the side, dead or dying. Sometimes the bycatch can account for as much as 90% of the haul. No sane farmer would use a machine that cuts down an entire orchard just for one apple – it should not happen at sea either. Destructive fishing not only affects the fish populations, but also other species and their ocean homes. There are many different fishing methods that result in huge levels of bycatch.

Read more about how stop turtles, whales and sharks drowning in fishing nets

Make politicians prove they are serious about marine protection by really ending whaling.

Whales are icons of our oceans. Their story of being hunted to the brink of extinction, one species after another, is the lesson the fishing industry is refusing to learn. Millions of people were part of the global campaign to stop commercial whaling nearly thirty years ago. But like so many other ocean agreements – the rules are being bent and ignored, and still whales are hunted. Even more are killed as bycatch, through pollution and ship strikes. These mighty titans of the ocean are a warning about how we treat our seas - a warning that we can no longer ignore. Read the story of the whales.

If we stop using the oceans as a giant dumpsite it wouldn’t be choked with plastic, oil and chemicals. 

We dump more garbage in the ocean than the weight of fish we take out. Pollutionon land has a massive impact at sea. Imagine a Trash Vortex about the size of Afghanistan, (or Texas, Turkey, the Ukraine or Zambia) endlessly swirling around, full of our plastic rubbish. It’s not imaginary – it’s real. Creeping dead zones in the ocean that can be seen from space are another direct result of our land-based habits. While oil spills at sea may grab the headlines, it is daily oil run-off from land that clogs up more ocean life. Find out where your garbage goes and if we have collected it

Ocean protection begins on land. It begins with each of us.

Along with eminent scientists from around the world, we believe that a global network of ocean sanctuaries (also called marine reserves), will give our oceans the breathing space they need to recover and keep our planet (and us) breathing in the future.

Join the call for oceans sanctuaries and find out what else you can do to be part of building oceans fit for the future.

The latest updates

 

The overfishing denier

Blog entry by John Hocevar | 12 May, 2016 1 comment

A Greenpeace investigation shows that a prominent American fisheries scientist took millions of dollars in funding from fishing industry groups without publicly disclosing it. Warming and acidifying waters. Massive bleaching of...

The road to Arctic protection

Blog entry by Sara del Rio | 10 May, 2016 1 comment

Over the past year, many you have helped put pressure on OSPAR (the Oslo-Paris Convention) to stand up for Arctic protection. Since we started work on getting OSPAR to protect an area around the North Pole roughly the size of the UK...

4 reasons to tackle destructive fishing this World Tuna Day

Blog entry by François Chartier | 2 May, 2016

On World Tuna Day, the Greenpeace ship Esperanza is at sea stopping the destructive fishing practices of the largest tuna company on the planet – Thai Union – which owns popular tuna brands like John West, Petit Navire, Mareblu and...

How birdwatching helps stop Thai Union's ocean destruction

Blog entry by François Chartier | 26 April, 2016 3 comments

"I have a visual at two o'clock!" We rush to the 'monkey island', the highest platform of the Greenpeace ship Esperanza, where watchers scan the ocean from sunrise to sunset. The ship changes course and heads towards the small floating...

Heading to sea to stop destructive fishing

Blog entry by François Chartier | 19 April, 2016 1 comment

The smell of fish is all around the Greenpeace Esperanza. We’ve been docked in Diego Suarez in Madagascar, getting ready to take on the tuna giant Thai Union again. Fittingly, there’s a fish processing factory right next to the ship...

5 lesser-known threats to the fragile Arctic Ocean

Blog entry by Emily Buchanan | 19 April, 2016 5 comments

You probably know that climate change is melting Arctic ice  with astonishing speed . And while some hear a warning bell, others see a business opportunity. As Arctic ice disappears, oil companies and fishing fleets are moving further...

3 (unpalatable) facts you need to know if you eat sashimi

Blog entry by Yen Ning | 14 April, 2016

One in three pieces of sashimi is from fish caught by Taiwanese fishing vessels. If you eat imported seafood, chances are you’ve eaten Taiwan caught fish, so when we’re talking Taiwanese seafood, we’re talking about an industry that...

Made in Taiwan

Publication | 14 April, 2016 at 4:30

Illegality and criminal wrongdoing in Taiwanese fisheries are increasingly well documented. Yet too often these very serious problems are reported and dealt with by Taiwanese authorities as if they were isolated incidents - the responsibility of...

UN talks put wind in the sails of ocean protection efforts

Blog entry by Veronica Frank | 14 April, 2016

The world has started to develop a new treaty to protect ocean life. And the progress is encouraging! A new ocean treaty in the works right now may help protect two thirds of the world’s oceans and set up rules to create and...

Can a new ocean treaty protect the Arctic?

Blog entry by Sarah North and Magnus Eckeskog | 8 April, 2016 1 comment

Two thirds of our oceans are beyond national borders and belong to all of us. But right now it’s like the wild west out there – the oceans and seabeds are at the mercy of reckless exploitation because existing ocean law focuses far...

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