Fish and chips on the high seas

Using the Rainbow Warrior and inflatable boats, Greenpeace activists disrupted the Ocean Reward from destroying deep sea coral forests that take hundreds of years to grow.  The vessel was bottom trawling in international waters of the Tasman Sea.

Our activists delayed the vessel from deploying its net by attaching an inflatable life-raft (and dodging potatoes, yes, potatoes, fired by angry trawlermen.)

Our oceans campaigner in New Zealand, Carmen Gravatt, said from onboard the Rainbow Warrior, "This type of fishing is considered by scientists to be the greatest threat to deep sea biodiversity and every trawl does incredible damage.

Bottom trawling nets are dragged along the sea floor. Huge chains or rollers attached to the front of the nets destroy everything in their path, including coral forests, as well as sponges, worm tubes, mussels, boulder fields, and rocky reefs. Many species of non-target fish and other deep sea creatures are unintentionally caught as well. Then they are dumped - dead or dying - over the side.

Last year we documented bottom trawlers hauling up sea stars, rocks and even endangered black coral, despite fishing industry claims that their bottom trawling vessels did not touch the seafloor. (We are pretty sure that those rocks weren't floating, guys.)

This week the sixth meeting of the impressively-titled United Nations Informal Consultation on Oceans and the Law of the Sea (UNICPOLOS) gets underway at the UN in New York. The focus of the meeting is on sustainable fisheries and it is expected that the demand for a UN moratorium on high seas bottom trawling will again be on the table for discussion - and if not, we intend to put it there. There is a growing number of countries that are moving to support this as the only responsible action to provide immediate protection for deep sea biodiversity.


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