Feature story - June 7, 2005
Activists aboard the Rainbow Warrior took on a bottom trawling vessel off the coast of New Zealand, preventing the ship from deploying its lethal nets by attaching an inflatable life raft. The vessel's crew responded by firing potatoes at our activists, using compressed air guns.
Greenpeace activists prevent trawler from deploying destructive nets.
Bottom trawling is the most destructive fishing practice in the
world. Massive underwater nets anchored by heavy chains or rollers
are literally dragged across the ocean floor, destroying everything
in their path. Greenpeace is fighting back by exposing this
underwater equivalent of clear-cutting, and using the Rainbow
Warrior to disrupt trawling vessels.
Dave Walsh, web editor on board the Rainbow Warrior, gave the
following account of last year's expedition as the Warrior followed
seven trawling ships.
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"We watched them raising tons of fish, corals - and even rocks
from the ocean floor! Dozens of species of 'unwanted' deep sea life
were tossed over the side of the bottom trawlers, internal organs
blown apart from the violent change in pressure."
Among the huge amounts of marine life caught in the nets: fish,
sea stars, squid, sea urchins and ghost sharks that were hauled up
and discarded, and even endangered black coral, a species listed on
the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
(CITES) for over 20 years. Corals are the foundation of unique
deep-sea communities and their destruction affects everything else
living in or near them on the sea floor.
Aboard the Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace New Zealand campaigner
Carmen Gravatt said, "The deep sea is the largest pool of
undiscovered life on Earth. Bottom trawling these unknown worlds is
like blowing up Mars before we get there. A moratorium on bottom
trawling in international waters is urgently needed to protect life
in the deep sea."
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