Greenpeace

Thought that title would catch your interest.  It’s a loaded phrase, given its reference to a controversial issue rife with environmental, cultural, political and socioeconomic implications.  That issue, of course, is pirate fishing.

What?

That’s right – pirate fishing.  Off the West Coast of Africa, we have found and documented a fleet of ships that are fishing illegally, stealing fish from the poorest countries in the world and selling them at a considerable profit to wealthy markets in Europe and North America.  The fish are caught by ships that are barely seaworthy, with horrid onboard living conditions for the exploited crews that man them. And the operation hides and launders its illicit cargo by illegally transferring the fish from the pirate vessels to a large refrigerated vessel called a reefer (ah ha!).  It is these reefers that covertly take the cargo to wealthy European markets, by which they make their way to the rest of the world.  It is madness, in every sense of the word.

And Greenpeace is on the scene to smoke them out.  

You know, bring them out into the open, so they can no longer hide.

Our work on pirate fishing is part of Greenpeace’s Defending Our Oceans tour.  Our ship the Esperanza is on a year-long expedition, with the purpose of drawing attention to the myriad threats that currently face our high seas around the world.  It started with our work in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica, where we took on the Japanese whaling fleet for two months as part of our effort to end commercial whaling once and for all.  Speaking of which, we just won a significant victory for the whales, as the three largest companies who fund the whaling fleet announced last week that they plan to divest.  We have since moved to the West Coast of Africa, where we are confronting these pirate fishing operations and bringing in authorities who have the power to stop it.

Pirate fishing poses considerable consequences to the health of our oceans, as every year millions of fish are caught outside the regulations designed to protect them.  The human rights implications are also huge, from the crews essentially working in servitude in abysmal conditions on ships that are death traps, to the fact that the poorest nations in the world are losing roughly $100 million each year in stolen fish.  Making matters worse is the fact that the countries in whose waters this is happening don’t have the capacity to effectively police the situation.  They need the help of governments from around the world with the resources to help, especially in places like Europe where the fish get laundered and shipped to other destinations.  These governments could go a long ways towards ending this exploitative practice by cracking down on illegal fishing vessels and operations in their ports, and making sure the companies involved are prosecuted.

Maybe we just need to phrase it differently to spark the interest of western countries and international authorities to take this on.  Tell ‘em large reefer ships are on the way to their ports, with holds stuffed to the gills in illegal substances.