News stories
Stake outs, testimony from informers, hidden cameras and tailing trucks full of stolen goods - it reads like a Hollywood movie, but it was an every day experience for Greenpeace activists in Japan, who have spent four months cracking open a major conspiracy of corruption at the heart of Japan's government-backed, sham scientific whaling operation.
We caught an illegal tuna purse seiner (Queen Evelyn 168) in the Pacific Commons on Friday. This Philippines-flagged vessel was close to the transfer of tuna between her sister vessel and a refrigerated mothership. It was likely that transfer of fish at sea, involving this illegal vessel, was about to occur. But upon our arrival the vessels immediately separated and fled.
Just a few days into our three-month “Defending Our Mediterranean” tour, and already the Arctic Sunrise has come face-to-face with pirates. In the early hours of the morning, we confiscated almost two kilometres of illegal driftnet, containing dead, undersized bluefin tuna - and a small sea turtle.
The GM food industry suffered another serious setback today as European Commissioners overturned the verdict of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), who had given assurances that three new types of GM crops were safe. For the first time, Europe's most senior lawmakers are publicly doubting the safety of GM crops.
As the seventh annual Carbon Capture & Sequestration conference gets underway in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Greenpeace has launched 'False Hope' - a report critically examining the status and promise of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The conclusion is that, despite what the coal and power industries claim, CCS will not prevent more than a whiff of global warming pollution from reaching the atmosphere in the next few decades.
The Greenpeace ship Esperanza freed tuna, sharks, marlin and an endangered sea turtle from a Taiwanese longliner on Saturday. The vessel was fishing in the Pacific Commons, the international waters we want to see protected as a marine reserve.
Despite insisting a week ago that they wouldn’t be bounced into taking action, Unilever boss, Patrick Cescau performed a swift about turn today and announced that his company is supporting our call for a moratorium – a complete halt – on rainforest destruction in Indonesia.
The Mediterranean Sea is a global treasure. Rich seagrass meadows and rocky reefs dominate its coastal zone while an awe-inspiring array of underwater mountains (seamounts), cold seeps and trenches are found on its seabed.
Our research voyage to the Bering Sea has led to the discovery of a species of sponge new to science. Using state-of-the-art manned submarines to explore the world's deepest underwater canyons the new sponge was collected in samples of never before seen life from the Bering Sea floor.
It is now the 22 anniversary of Chernobyl explosion, the largest civil nuclear disaster ever. Serious contamination spread over 150 000 square kilometres in Byelorussia, Ukraine and Russia. Radioactive clouds deposited radiation thousands of kilometres away. Hundreds of thousands people had to be evacuated, and millions more were left to live in areas that were dangerous to their health and lives.
