Finally some good news. Our government seems to be listening to the tens of thousands of Kiwis who have asked it to ban shark finning in New Zealand waters. Yesterday it announced a proposal to stop the senseless and wasteful...

Our Pacific oceans campaign is focused on ensuring sustainable and equitable fishing in the Pacific. ©Paul Hilton/Greenpeace   Fishing in the pacific is, quite simply put, unfair. Pacific island countries receive a...

Tuna longline fisheries are one of the most scandalous fishing businesses on the planet, operating mostly out of sight and out of control. Longlining is the fishing method that catches the big valuable tunas aimed at fulfilling the...

On Monday – one year, eight months and 12 days after the government released the alarming news that there were only 55 Maui's dolphins over the age of one left on the planet – the Minister of Conservation finally announced what he...

Greenpeace activists unfold a banner next to a cluster of foreign longline fishing vessels at a harbour in the Pacific reading “Fewer boats more fish WCPFC Act Now!” urging the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC)...

In the summer of 2012, small-scale Senegalese fishermen  reported a rapid and significant increase  in their catches. They attributed their rising fortunes to newly elected President Macky Sall's decision to revoke the licences of 29...

Wow! What a fantastic beginning to 2014 – the government has finally announced a ban on shark finning in New Zealand waters! Yesterday’s news that its plans to make shark finning illegal is a great step in the right direction –...

Sharks get a bad rap for being ‘dangerous predators’ that need to be controlled. That might be true in Hollywood, but in the real world humans are way more deadly for sharks. Our friend Kaspar Graham-Koorey (and his father) made...

It is now more than 30 days since our ship was seized and our 30 friends and colleagues were arrested. They now face a charge of piracy — an absurd charge that carries a maximum 15 year jail sentence.  In the meantime pirate fishing...

They said it couldn't be done. They said you couldn't change Japanese attitudes to eating seafood. They laughed when we said we planned to change the way some of Japan's biggest corporations, retailers, wholesalers and restaurants buy...

Monday was the 25-year anniversary of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. Now seems a good time to reflect on lessons learned, and lessons lost. 1.  Oil spill “cleanup” is a myth . Once oil has spilled, it is impossible to...

A sperm whale Today the International Court of Justice handed down its long-anticipated decision on whether Japan's government-subsidised whaling programme in the Southern Ocean should be allowed to continue. We have been...

We know climate change is the biggest threat facing our world, which is why it is Greenpeace’s priority campaign. Today’s  report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s highlights the enormous  impacts and...

There has been disappointing and worrying news today. The Government of Japan has announced that it intends to return to the Southern Ocean to hunt whales in 2015. It has also officially announced that it will again send its factory...

Tuna are awesome. We don’t get to say that enough, so since it’s World Tuna Day, I want to make amends. These fish are majestic ocean wanderers, who have earned their place in history, but today they are sadly the icons of global...

We had a strange visitor to Japan yesterday, the Alma, a refrigerated cargo vessel which has sailed all the way from Iceland carrying 2,000 tons of fin whale meat, valued at over 13 million US dollars. It sailed around the tip of...

So Shane Jones is off. Retired from politics he says. Couldn’t give 100 percent to the cause so he did what he thought was best for the Party. Shane Jones has always been a polarising figure and never more so when it comes to his...

Today is the  International Day for Biological Diversity . That’s a bit of a mouthful, but put simply it’s a day officially set aside to celebrate the world’s wealth of wildlife. For 2014 the theme is Island Biodiversity. Isolated...

Every day is Turtle Day when you're an ocean campaigner… When I heard it was World Turtle Day , I hatched a plan. I know that to an international audience 'turtle' covers a multitude of reptile species, but rather than getting all...

The chicken or the egg? John or George? Could Jurassic Park actually, really happen?! Certain classic debates are enormously divisive. Thankfully though we can now put one that has long plagued humanity to bed as we bring you the ...

UPDATE:   The Government of Japan has officially cancelled plans to hunt whales in the Southern Ocean this coming year. Detailed update at bottom.     Original post: Whales everywhere will be jumping for joy today.

Apparently, unless Fairfax is now taking on The Civilian in the field of satirical news, the Minister of Conservation Nick Smith and fishing magnate Peter Talley are planning a fishing museum in Nelson. And the Minister considers...

It’s incredible to watch the unravelling of the tangled web illegal fishers have woven around their dirty business. Fishing companies have created elaborate webs of deception stretching from Korea to New Zealand, Argentina to South...

Seeing Greenpeace in the leading headline of Hong Kong's most prestigious financial newspaper is not something I am used to! But if you knew why, you would see how your support is bringing companies engaged in overfishing to their...

We usually refer to them as Pacific Island nations, but territories like Kiribati are more like vast ocean nations. Kiribati (pronounced 'Kirr-i-bas') is a nation of 33 coral atolls and reef islands dispersed over 3.5 million square...

Fish don’t talk, but if they did they'd be asking the Pacific Tuna Commission just how rare they need to become before anyone will step in to save them." Fish don’t talk, but fishing industry people do… operational level data. FAD ban...

As a country with so much invested in high-tech export earnings, Korea’s out-of-control distant water fishing industry must be starting to give its politicians and business leaders ulcers. The Oyang 75 sitting in Montevideo, Uruguay,...

One week in to 2015, and even though some New Year’s resolutions will already have fallen by the wayside, we all need to urgently think about one more resolution:  The resolution to protect the oceans and all its beautiful whales,...

Finding illegal fishing vessels in the vast expanse of the Southern Ocean – over 20 million square kilometers of deep, rough and icy waters – sounds like a near impossible task. But it turns out that finding them is the easy part,...

It is time for Ocean Lovers worldwide to celebrate! After years of political foot-dragging, and four hectic days of negotiations at the United Nations, a breakthrough came in the wee hours of Saturday morning, 24 January:...

No, that's not a football score, it's the score-card on how our countries are faring in the protection of two of the world's smallest and cutest marine mammals: Mexico's vaquita porpoise and New Zealand's Maui's dolphin. New Zealand...

When we trust a bank with our savings and investments, we assume the bank will do only "good" with our hard-earned cash. Yet throughout Europe, and the world, major banks have ploughed massive amounts of money into unsustainable...

It’s a macabre case spanning continents. A European vessel crewed by under paid and ill-treated Indonesian fishermen turned up in the port of Suva this week. Meanwhile, an illegal shipment of sharks, shark fins and other fish from...

Mamadou Sarr is a 54-year old Senegalese artisanal fisherman who has been working at sea for over 36 years. He entered the profession out of his love for fishing and the ocean, and has been supporting a family of eight with his daily...

No reason to deny it – making it official makes things a tad more real! Today the United Nations General Assembly formally decided to develop a High Seas Biodiversity Agreement, endorsing  the breakthrough outcome  of the UN...

Remember these little guys? There are only 97 vaquita left in the world and you’ve been part of a global campaign to save them. In fact, in just the last 5 weeks, 100,000 of you have stood up and demanded they be protected. And good...

There’s no easy way to say this:  The seafood at your local supermarket may be connected to slavery.  It’s heartbreaking. Fishing operators  in over 50 countries  around the world are crewing ships through human trafficking networks...

The Esperanza is in the Gulf of California right now, patrolling the waters to document the continued and illegal presence of gill-nets. These fishing nets are mostly responsible for the rapidly declining numbers of vaquitas – the most...

Today, we're releasing five new video testimonials from Pacific tuna fishermen detailing the horrible conditions they've worked under. The interviews—conducted in a South Pacific port earlier this year—reveal incidents of abuse,...

There's a tendency, outside my science world at least, to talk about 'tuna' as if it was one species of fish. In fact tuna is a generic name for a whole bunch of tuna and mackerel species. As well as the main commercial species of...

The cruel yet lucrative shark fin trade is back in the  headlines  and it's clearly something people care deeply about, public pressure and a  petition  signed by nearly 180,000 people, prompted shipping giant United Parcel Service...

Motherships… transshipping… they sound like things you'd find in outer space while you're star trekking across the universe. But the Rainbow Warrior is finding them way out in the high seas, in areas of the Pacific Ocean that are more...

We knew that the Taiwanese longline vessel could be fishing illegally almost as soon as its details popped up on the Rainbow Warrior's radar system. We were in the high seas of the Pacific, at least two days away, but when our...