So far on this tour we’ve done a lot of work to highlight the destructiveness of fish aggregating devices (or FADs) – and we’ve even confiscated a few as well, as there was a 2-month ban on their use in the high seas that evidently did not stop many commercial fishing vessels from using them. There's a pile of five of these things on our deck. One member of the crew described them to me as looking like giant, rusty crayons, but they're nothing nearly as benign as that.

The use of FADs results in the bycatch of many juvenile tuna and other species like sharks, turtles, and reef fish, contributing to the depletion of fish stocks and threatening vulnerable marine life.

To really show the diversity of marine life being threatened by FADs, our divers captured some footage and we’ve put together this short video:

Ahoy there! I’m blogging from the Greenpeace ship Esperanza out here in the Pacific. We’ve just embarked on the second leg of the Defending Our Pacific 2009 tour, which is aimed at getting all four of the high seas pockets you see on the map below (marked in orange) designated as marine reserves – which is to say, closed to ALL fishing.



We left Port Vila, Vanuatu just a few days ago, and are currently in transit, headed back out to the high seas to continue our quest to stop the pillage of international waters by longline and purse seine fishing vessels.

A transit generally means a bit of down time, so I’m taking it upon myself to document some ship life for you. Check out these pics:


Our captain, Madeleine (with binoculars), and second mate, Nadia, on the Espy's bridge, charting a course out of Port Vila Harbor.


After taking my turn on "whale watch" yesterday evening, I stepped out onto the deck and noticed this high seas sunset. Pretty nice, eh?

For a bit of recent history, check out the blog posts by Mary Ann (here, here, and here), the intrepid webbie who I have replaced onboard (actually I only replaced her as webbie, she’s still onboard as a deckhand and is taking care of our waste and recycling in the role of "chief garbologist" — a noble and selfless job, I can tell you, having helped with the compost yesterday morning). As you can see from the blogs, the first leg of the tour was spent patrolling the first and second high seas zones to help enforce a temporary ban on fish aggregating devices (FADs) – highly destructive devices that catch EVERYTHING indiscriminately. FADs are commonly used by purse seine fishing vessels. We took direct action against those violating the ban. For instance, you can see the crew hauling a FAD we confiscated up on to the Espy here:



On the second leg of the tour, we’re going to continue searching out the pirates and the pillagers, and stand in solidarity with the Pacific island countries who are seeking a closure of the high seas pockets. We are also pushing for the implementation of sensible, sustainable fishing practices rather than longlines, purse seines, FADs, and all the other highly destructive fishing practices that are currently in use. Stay tuned.

Check out video of a press conference the team over at CROC just did. They're getting pretty desperate. They claim to have been endorsed by a "prominent environmental organization:"


There’s a bunch more of this type of insanity going on over at TheCROC.org. They have an “Earned Devastation Calculator” that lets you compute how much environmental devastation you’re “entitled” to based on the good things you’ve done for the environment. (Then you can Tweet the results or sending them to Facebook. It’s utterly shameless.)

A few days ago I wrote about carbon offsets, the push from corporate polluters to include them in the  American carbon market that would be created by ACES, and why that’s such a bad idea. I also posted the PSA from a new organization called the Carbon Regulatory Offset Committee (CROC), which advocates expanding the offset program to individuals.

CROC is not promoting the voluntary offsets you might purchase to offset the carbon emissions from flying in a plane or powering your home. CROC is determined to give Americans the “right” to do harm to the environment in return for the good things they do for the environment – using the very same logic coporate polluters use when they argue that they should be allowed to continue dumping carbon emissions into our air in exchange for purchasing offsets to protect forests somewhere else in the world. The bottom line is that emissions must come down. Corporate polluters shouldn’t be able to buy their way out of it with offsets – which aren’t even a reliable trade-off by any measure.

Not only do offsets allow polluters to continue business as usual, but they’re difficult to measure reliably – especially over the long-term. In fact, the largest auditor of clean-energy projects in the world was just suspended by UN inspectors "after it was unable to prove its staff had properly vetted projects that were then approved for the [European] carbon-trading scheme."

Of course, the folks at CROC responded with a blog titled “The UN needs to take a chill pill."

If you do something good for the environment, does it make any sense that you should then be entitled to do something bad to the environment?

Of course it doesn’t. And yet that is basically what corporate polluters are pushing for as climate legislation makes its way through Congress. Rather than making required pollution cuts, they want to use “carbon offsets,” which would essentially allow them to continue their dirty, polluting business as usual while outsourcing green jobs and cleaner skies elsewhere…mostly overseas!

Amazingly, despite the fact that offsets could totally undermine our efforts to combat global warming –letting polluters increase greenhouse gas emissions for years to come – there is now a group out there advocating carbon offsets be made available to individuals, so that regular folks can also be entitled to do something bad to the environment if they do something good for it. The group is called the Carbon Regulatory Offset Committee (CROC). Check out this video from their charismatic spokesman, Carl Cordova:


Offsets work like this: rather than making required emissions reductions, polluters outsource their obligations – paying others to protect forests overseas, for instance. The flaws in this scheme are manifold. Aside from allowing polluters to evade their responsibility to reduce their emissions as quickly as possible in order to prevent runaway global warming, offsets are difficult to measure and verify.

How much forest, a living ecosystem that is constantly changing, do you have to protect to equal a ton of carbon? How do you make sure it gets protected over the long-term? If it burns in a totally natural forest fire, does it still count as an offset? Most importantly, how do you make sure the same amount of deforestation doesn’t just happen somewhere else instead?

You really need to check out TheCROC.org to appreciate just how insane offsets are.

One week from today, the largest live film event in the world will take place for the global premiere of The Age of Stupid. As you no doubt have inferred from the many tweets and blogs we've posted, Greenpeace has partnered with the filmmakers to promote the film, mobilize moviegoers, and make the global premiere a green event to be remembered for all time.

The Age of Stupid has been called a docu-drama-animation hybrid, which probably means nothing to you, but there it is. It's also been called "the next, far hipper An Inconvenient Truth." The movie stars Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite as an old man living in the global warming-ravaged world of 2055, watching archive footage from 2008 and desperately wondering: Why didn't we stop climate change while we had the chance?

Here's a sneak peek at one of the coolest animations from the movie:

On September 21st, communities around the world will be gathering in movie theaters, community centers, stadiums, and even on beaches where makeshift screens will be set up so that people can view the movie and be inspired to call on their leaders to act.  In New York City, a "green carpet" premiere will take place, with celebrities arriving by sustainable transportation (bike, rickshaw, train, boat, etc.). There are also several cities around the US having "simulcast" events, you can find locations and buy tickets here.

To give you a small taste of what you might expect at the premiere events, as well as the reason we think this movie is so important, here's a video of Eric Philips, polar explorer on board the Arctic Sunrise, which was used to open the Australian premiere of the film:

As you have no doubt heard by now, a variety of conservative organizations led by a Big Oil industry group are staging Astroturf rallies around the country to "protest" global warming legislation. What you may not know is that a self-proclaimed eco-friendly company, Verizon, is co-sponsoring a rally in West Virginia. And not just any rally, but the "Friends of America" rally, which is organized by Massey Energy, a union-busting coal company that's a major force behind mountaintop removal in Appalachia.

Verizon is always asking, "Can you hear me now?" So call Verizon and make sure they can hear YOU. Tell them that their support of this global warming denial rally is unacceptable. Here's what to do:

1. Call 908-559-2000 (Verizon's executive offices - you can probably leave a message)
2. Tell them you have a complaint you want to register with the company. If you're a customer of Verizon, mention that fact.
3. Here's what to say:

I just heard that Verizon is a sponsor of a rally THIS LABOR DAY in West Virginia that is denying the reality of global warming and obstructing climate solutions. This is outrageous and unacceptable. Global warming is important to me because XXXX. I demand that Verizon withdraw sponsorship of this rally immediately.

You can also mention that unless Verizon pulls out of this rally, you will (choose whichever applies to you):

a. Drop your Verizon service (or will likely drop your service)
b. You will tell your friends to drop their Verizon service
c. You will never be a Verizon wireless customer

If that first number doesn't work, try these:

845-365-7700 Verizon Executive Services
908-717-3115 Verizon Escalation Hotline
240-568-2459 Verizon Executive Relations
908-559-7000 Verizon headquarters

After you make the call, you can go here and let us know how it went. Thanks for taking the time to make your voice heard and let Verizon know that we can hear them, and we don't like what we're hearing!

Last Thursday, the Esperanza left Suva, Fiji and embarked on the Defending Our Pacific 2009 tour. During the two-month tour, the Espy will patrol international waters in the Central and Western Pacific Ocean and help ensure that international tuna fleets adhere to the two-month ban on purse seine fleets using.

I realize that was a lot of technical speak and campaign jargon, and that I should really explain what all that means, but there is a much more pressing matter at hand: The tour has already scored its first victory against the commercial fishing fleets who are brazenly violating the ban and using highly destructive FADs!

But I’ll let our webbie onboard the Espy, Mary Ann, tell the story:

FAD Watch (And It’s Not About Trendy Fashion)

Date: Tuesday, 31 August 2009
Location: High Seas Area 1, Western Pacific Ocean
Weather conditions: Sunny day, clear skies, light breeze
Objective: To look out for FADs

A few days ago, we arrived in the High Seas of the Pacific. Since yesterday, we have been on constant watch, scanning the horizon by day, the radar by night, diligently on the look-out for FADs and fishing boats.

Up in the bridge, Gabriel (one of our dive team, and resident shark expert) was the first to go on FAD watch at 8 in the morning. And, lo and behold, you guessed it … he spotted the very thing we were looking for — a FAD!

What’s a FAD, you ask? For the unfamiliar, FAD stands for Fish Aggregating Device. Like a magnet, FADs are designed to attract tuna into an set area. The fish are then caught by industrial purse seiners. These devices not only attract tuna, but also a host of other species such as sharks, turtles and other fish.

These FADs float at sea until they have attracted a sizable enough population of tuna. Once enough tuna are attracted, the fish and all other accumulated marine life is scooped up in a huge net, in one fell swoop. It’s a very wasteful way of fishing.

The irony of the situation is that we have found this FAD right in the middle of a two-month ban, from 1 August to 30 September. The ban was declared by the Pacific Tuna Commission, which manages tuna fishing in the international waters of the region.

So there I was walking around, a sleepy zombie, until I snapped awake when someone told me we’d found a FAD. There was a general hubbub going on around me. Deckies were by the inflatables, getting ready to launch them. The divers were checking their dive equipment and gearing up in the wet room. Breakfast was a distant memory of wolfing down one buttered toast as I hurried to catch the action. It was the same general excitement when I went up the bridge, the campaign team were complete and two binoculars were trained on the bobbing FAD.

The African Queen (one of our inflatable boats) sped to the bobbing FAD. Our divers soon discovered that schools of fish had already gathered around it.

As well as sharks, some of them juvenile too!

Normally, these FADs act like deadly fish magnets. But these critters were spared the usual fate that befalls the marine life lured to them. Instead, it was the FAD itself that we fished out of the water. It turned out to be a floating drum, looking very much like a huge brown crayon, caked with rust, barnacles and containing some small fish annoyed to be (temporarily) taken out of the water.

Finding this FAD was both good and bad at the same time. Good, because we were able to find one and confiscate it, but bad because this is a wasteful practice used by industrial fishing companies to increase their tuna catch, and despite the ban in place, we still found one. If the use of FADs continues, tuna stocks face a grim future in the region, and other marine life (such as sharks and turtles) will continue to become the unintended casualties of industrial fishing.

For Gabriel, the reward for his early-morning FAD spotting was the chance to get into the water with some of his sharky friends, and to know they are — at least for now — safe from harm.

-Mary Ann

Images: © Greenpeace/Hilton

I’m especially excited about this tour because, in addition to the many great stories and amazing images I’m sure we can expect for the next two months, I get to take over from Mary Ann at the end of September as the onboard webbie!!! (In case my gratuitous use of triple exclamation points doesn’t convey this to you: I’m ridiculously excited.)

Mary Ann will keep posting updates here throughout the next month, until I take over. So keep tuning in right here to the GPUSA blog for more updates, more amazing images, and more successes in defending the Pacific!