Greenpeace

Greetings from Grand Isle, Louisiana, one of the growing number of places unlucky enough to win a "heavily oiled" classification on the government maps tracking the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Despite BP's efforts to keep it under wraps, we're here to document the impacts of the spill. The public has a right - and a responsibility - to know the true cost of our continued reliance on offshore oil, and fossil fuels in general.

Yesterday we saw part of the evidence of that cost. Walking through Grand Isle State Park, we came across a tidal flat that was littered with tens of thousands of dead hermit crabs. It was a depressing scene, and took me all the way back to my first visit to the beach, over 35 years ago, when discovering hermit crabs at Rocky Neck State Park in Connecticut helped inspire a life-long love of the ocean.

Now, I realize it can seem a little odd to wax poetically about hermit crabs when we're talking about the biggest environmental disaster in North American history. As John Stewart pointed out on the Daily Show, entire communities along the Gulf Coast are reeling right now, and many species - sea birds, turtles, and even a population of sperm whales - are being pushed to the brink of extinction. Why should anyone care about a few hermit crabs?

The problem is that it's all connected. Hermit crabs may not be quite as cute as sea turtles or as strikingly beautiful as roseate spoonbills, but they are a bellwether for the health of the Gulf of Mexico. Hermit crabs stay largely out of site, eking out a living in sandy and marshy sand and mud. When the sediment fills up with oil, so do the shells of the hermit crabs, and they suffocate. So if all the hermit crabs on a beach die, it's pretty safe to say that the entire top layer of sand is full of oil - and no longer able to sustain life other than bacteria.


And it doesn't stop there, because hermit crabs are an important part of marine food webs, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico. Shore birds like spoonbills, egrets, and herons feed heavily on hermit crabs, and so do nurse sharks, flounders, and many other types of fish. Whether they feed on oiled hermit crabs and are poisoned by the toxic mix of oil and chemical dispersants or go hungry because large portions of their food supply have succumbed to this disaster, the impacts of the hermit crab die off we saw last night don't end with the hermit crabs.

The true cost of oil doesn't end at the gaspump.

For the oceans,
John Hocevar

 

Reports are trickling in about an increasing number of dolphins and sea turtles washing up dead on the Gulf of Mexico coast. We are starting to see oil-covered seabirds, bringing back memories of the terrible photos from the Exxon Valdez spill. There were even rumors this week, as yet unconfirmed, of several dead sperm whales.

Unfortunately, this is just the beginning. No one seems to know for sure how much oil has been spilled, but the estimates keep increasing. Some scientists are now saying that the equivalent of two Valdez spills per week is gushing into the Gulf right now. So far, most of the oil has remained below the surface, offshore, and out of sight – and so have the impacts to marine life.

Part of the problem with assessing what the spill is doing to Gulf species has been a lack of transparency by those doing the assessing. BP has hired contractors to test dead animals, but what we’ve seen from them so far has been a bit dubious. When contractors tell the media that the number of dead dolphins is no cause for alarm, or that there is no link to the spill, it doesn’t exactly instill confidence.

NOAA is the federal agency we would expect to lead this, and it is good to see that they are taking a larger role now. Unfortunately, before even preliminary analysis has been shared about whether use of toxic chemical dispersants is compounding the threat to marine life, the Environmental Protection Agency has just approved their use at depth. No one knows the impact this will have on the Gulf ecosystem, but it will keep more of those impacts out of sight – and at least for now, that is enough for BP and the Obama Administration.

But not for us.

We spent the last week patrolling the waters of the Mediterranean for illegal driftnetters.  The good news is that for the first time, we didn't find any.  (No pirates is good pirates!) Weather was probably a factor, as it was often a bit rough for them to be able to operate.  There's also the Greenpeace Factor - word gets around that we are out looking, so pirate fishermen know their chances of getting away with it are pretty slim - they may just decide not to go fishing. 

While these were undoubtedly part of the reason why we didn't come across any illegal driftnetters in a week of searching, an even better explanation is that the increased controls we have fought for and won in recent years are starting to take effect.  Even Italy, which appeared ready to flaunt the drift net ban, reversed their position the day our search began.

This echoed our findings from the previous week, where for the first time in years we encountered no blatantly illegal bluefin fishing.  We did see military ships inspecting fishing boats, even sending divers down to look at tuna cages. 

There are still some loopholes in the regulations that enable people to cheat.  However, Raul Romeva, a member of the European Parliament Fisheries Committee, was on board with us to see firsthand what is going on.  Romeva has been instrumental in writing many of the recent regulations, so I have a feeling he will be able to use what he learned at sea with us to close some of these loopholes.  Better still, it sounds like he is becoming a champion for marine reserves.

Looking ahead, it is clear that controlling illegal fishing alone will not be enough to protect the Mediterranean, or to prevent the collapse of bluefin tuna.  The LEGAL catch, as set by ICCAT, the organization that has failed to listen even to the advice of its own scientists, is high enough to seal the bluefin's fate.

There is still time to turn things around.  First, we need Monaco, the US, and others to ban illegal trade in critically endangered bluefin until the population can recover.  This can happen next year, at the meeting of parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.  Then, we need countries throughout the region to work together to establish fully protected marine reserves.  Bluefin spawning areas are a good place to start – in the Med as well as the Gulf of Mexico.

I leave the ship in the morning.  I’m going to miss everyone on board, but I made some new friends that I know I’ll keep in touch with for a long time to come.  I’ll also miss the ship, and this big blue sea, but it makes it easier knowing that the Rainbow Warrior will be defending the Mediterranean long after I'm gone.  

For the Oceans - 

John Hocevar and the team aboard the Rainbow Warrior

After a long campaign, the United Nations banned “wall of death” driftnets in 1992.  Stretching up to 50 miles, these floating nets were notoriously indiscriminate, snaring enormous amounts of marine life.  The Japanese squid fishery alone was estimated to take over 41 million non-target fish, sharks, sea birds, marine mammals and sea turtles each year.  Following the UN’s ban on high seas drift nets, the European Union reinforced the move by banning their use in EU waters, and the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas further extended the ban to the whole Mediterranean.

Unfortunately, several countries are not respecting the ban.  Italy is probably the worst offender, with a large fleet of driftnetters operating in the Sicilian Channel, Tyrrhenian and Ionian Seas.  The Italian Government has taken some small steps to limit driftnetting, but in general they have chosen to look the other way.  We just got some good news, though.  After protests by Greenpeace and WWF, Italy just suspended their previous decree that Italian driftnetters would be allowed to operate up to 40 miles from the coast, which would have been in violation of international law.

 

Hard fought victories like the driftnet ban must be defended, so the Rainbow Warrior is patrolling the central Mediterranean to gather evidence on illegal activity, to be submitted to relevant authorities.  

The fishing season for bluefin tuna fishing has ended, and now the illegal driftnet season is in full swing.  Driftnetters target swordfish during their June/July spawning season, but the nets catch anything in their path – including bluefin. They operate at night, during the new moon, to make it difficult for fish to see the nets.  This is necessary because swordfish have highly developed eyes, aided by an exceptionally high density of blood vessels.  Swordfish are able to see far better in low light conditions than humans, to assist them in hunting for prey.

We are now in our target area, with what looks like a driftnet boat on our radar.  We’re going in for a closer look, and will continue to patrol throughout the night.  Our eyes may not work as well as swordfish, but hey, that’s why we’ve got binoculars.

For the oceans,

John Hocevar and the crew aboard the Rainbow Warrior