Over the past two weeks, the Rainbow Warrior has been at sea off the coast of Aotearoa, documenting bottom trawlers and standing up for ocean protection.
Greenpeace activists confronted two bottom trawlers at sea, calling out the trawling industry for what they are and painting “ocean killers” on the hull of Talley’s Amaltal Atlantis and Sealord’s Ocean Dawn.
Bottom trawling is a highly destructive and indiscriminate fishing method where heavy nets are dragged across the seafloor, bulldozing everything in the way. This includes turning precious coral into rubble and killing ‘bycatch’ like fur seals, sharks and seabirds..
The most up-to-date data shows that over a one-year period, New Zealand bottom trawlers hauled up 8, 316kg of corals and sponges, which are building blocks for ocean life. Over the same time period 1097 seabirds died in trawl nets, including 108 nationally critical Salvin’s albatross, while 272 mammals, including dolphins and fur seals, were also killed.
Greenpeace Aotearoa has a long-running campaign to ban bottom trawling from where it does the most harm. If we want to protect the ocean for the future bottom trawling must stop.
Add your voice now by signing our petition.
Join the call to demand that the NZ Govt bans bottom trawling on seamounts and similar deep sea features, and stop issuing permits for bottom trawling in international waters.
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