Greenpeace are at it again!

More power to greenpeace and all their backers. They are in the field making an immediate impact. Wish I could be with them. But we all do our part. In reality, I guess being on the high Seas in pretty exciting. I guess I'll have to stay in the classroom and breed junior environmentalists. It's frustrating at times because you don't see immediate results. I'll have to wait twenty years to see if anyone listened to me. IS it worth the wait? Yes! If three students out of 20 fight for the earth, I guess we made progress. Go GREENPEACE GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Gaetan P. said:
More power to greenpeace and all their backers. They are in the field making an immediate impact. Wish I could be with them. But we all do our part. In reality, I guess being on the high Seas in pretty exciting. I guess I'll have to stay in the classroom and breed junior environmentalists. It's frustrating at times because you don't see immediate results. I'll have to wait twenty years to see if anyone listened to me. IS it worth the wait? Yes! If three students out of 20 fight for the earth, I guess we made progress. Go GREENPEACE GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Chin up! My High School Biology Teacher got so fed up he quit teaching and now runs a local restuarant! But he was dead chuffed when I appeared there for lunch one day and said I was marine biologist......he reckons that it made his day that at least ONE student listened to him!!! (he was one of the best bio teachers I had!)

So this reward may yet be down the road for you!

J
 
a rabid squid said:
sorry to say this but i have my money on the fisherfolks :biggrin2:

Blasphemy!!

My money is on the environment, and for common sense to prevail!
 
The lack of education in the general public of the damage done by the fishing industry is staggering...some people I have talked to accused me of outright lying when bringing up facts...then you should see their faces after you pull out the hard information.
Go greenpeace!

as far as a war would go, just because we believe in a sensible approach to global use of resources, does not make us weak in the fist... :smile:

greg
 
Hmmm...perhaps the SS Tonmo needs a five inch gun and forward torpedo tubes?

Bloody fishermen.

greg
 
Yes, would have been great fun to be out there with them again too (except maybe not, given the present weather), but the timing was wrong... so I have to be another landlubbin' supporter this time around, glued to the weblog. And it should be verrrrrrrry interesting. :wink:
 
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?ObjectID=10329368

'It's not fishing, it's extinction'

This ancient piece of coral was tangled in a fishing net and dumped by the boat who dragged it up.

07.06.05

By Kevin Taylor

Bottom-trawling destroys the ocean floor, says Greenpeace, which has released a striking photograph to illustrate the damage wrought by the practice.

The photo, taken in 2003 in the Tasman Sea off the North Island, shows fishermen trying to untangle a huge piece of "gorgonian" coral the environmental organisation says is more than 500 years old.

Greenpeace oceans campaigner Shirley Atatagi-Coutts said: "This isn't fishing, this is extinction."

Spokesman Dean Baigent-Mercer asked why the practice was legal when it was illegal to clearfell native forests on land.

The organisation heard of the photo's existence and obtained it under the Official Information Act from the Ministry of Fisheries.

The boat was New Zealand-registered but Greenpeace was not told its name or who operated it.

Mr Baigent-Mercer said Greenpeace wanted an end to bottom-trawling in international waters and the Government to listen to scientists about its impact on domestic waters.

The photo was one of the best images globally showing the practice's impact, and it was being released as a UN meeting on ocean issues began in New York.

Mr Baigent-Mercer said bottom-trawling involved large underwater nets up to 40m wide that were dragged along the sea floor.

Huge chains or rollers attached to the front of the nets destroyed everything in their path, including coral forests, sponges, sharks, giant crabs, boulder fields and rocky reefs.

The method is the most common way of fishing in New Zealand's exclusive economic zone and internationally.

:sad:
 
Interesting, throughout that whole article I was waiting for the 'but... ' that surprisingly never came. Anyone else think someone's arm got twisted to write that report? 'We hear... ' 'He says... ' 'Apparently... ' maybe they should just finish it off with '... but we all know it's a pack of lies' just in case the audience didn't get the between-the-lines hints. :hmm:
 
cthulhu77 said:
Hmmm...perhaps the SS Tonmo needs a five inch gun and forward torpedo tubes?

Bloody fishermen.

greg

I've seen the SS tonmo - not quite what I'd recommend in hull-design for this sort of work. How about a decommissioned Soviet-era icebreaker? Nice and strong... :cool2:
 
Posted below, as these links have a habit of being deleted.
Greenpeace in high seas stoush with fishing trawler

Greenpeace in high seas stoush with fishing trawler
June 7, 2005 - 6:53PM

A high-seas drama unfolded when Greenpeace activists were "shot" at with potatoes when they targeted a New Zealand-based fishing boat for bottom trawling in international waters on the Tasman Sea on Tuesday.

Greenpeace New Zealand campaigner Carmen Gravatt, who was on board the protest boat Rainbow Warrior II, said activists delayed the vessel, the Ocean Reward, from deploying its net by attaching an inflatable life-raft.

She said crew from the Ocean Reward, owned by Nelson company Talley's Fisheries Ltd, responded by shooting whole potatoes at the activists from compressed air guns and sprayed them with high pressure fire hoses.

Gravatt said nobody was hurt during the incident that happened at midday, about 560km west of the North Island.

Bottom trawling is when fishing vessels fish with nets by dragging them along the sea floor.

Huge chains or rollers attached to the front of the nets destroy everything in the their path, including coral forests, as well as sponges, worm tubes, mussels, boulder fields, and rocky reefs, Gravatt said.

"This type of fishing is considered by scientists to be the greatest threat to deep sea biodiversity and every trawl does incredible damage," Gravatt said in a statement.

"A global moratorium on bottom trawling in international waters is urgently needed to protect life in the deep sea."

"Greenpeace is taking action against bottom trawling in international waters because governments have failed to establish a moratorium to stop the destruction," she said.

"Every trawl we disrupt, we could be saving coral forests that took hundreds of years to grow."

Talley's Fishing head Peter Talley said he would not comment about the incident until he had spoken with the vessel's crew.

Greenpeace also released a photograph of a giant piece of coral caught in a fishing boat's net which it says highlights the destructive practice of bottom trawling.

The 2003 photo taken on board a New Zealand-registered vessel in the Tasman Sea off the North Island was obtained in the past week by Greenpeace from the NZ government through freedom of information legislation.

It shows crew untangling from their fishing nets a piece of gorgonian coral which the environmental group says is more than 500 years old.

Both the New Zealand and Australian governments do not support calls for an international moratorium on the practice, which is being discussed at an informal United Nations meeting on oceans issues in New York this week.

NZPA/AAP
 
Go Go Greenpeace!!

Have had some interesting talks with a friend of mine who spent about 15 years working on Large scale shrimp boats between Labrador and Greenland.

I was curious about the process of their netting and after he described (in great detail) how the nets work I was shocked. Steel doors, steel balls, huge steel chain and steel sliders, all weighing in the tonnes, dragged along the ocean floor.

I asked him if he ever thought about what they were doing to the bottom with their fishing and he said that at the time it never crossed his mind, or if it did he didn't care.

Well, this discussion developed into a debate on the destruction level of trawler fishing and he was set in his mind that the ocean floor "up there" is "nothing but mud". For our next meeting (we work together) I gathered a little more info and continued the debate. He was honestly shocked and surprised at what studies have been showing and started to get a bit shaky on his previous stand. To finish it off, I sent him here to this site to do a little reading. :smile:

Well, the next day he actualy came to me and apologised over the strength of his previous debate as he really didnt know. I gather from what he was saying that there is no information, or a real lack of it, for the actual fishermen to read about this topic. It's almost kept supressed. Wee big brother stuff.!!

Anyway, this guy is a great guy. We both volounteer(sp?) at an organic fair trade coffee roaster and he has a real concious for world affairs including environmental. He still feel s bad and has been trying to contact his old fishing buddies to try and share all of this information and maybe start "spreading the news"

I know it's been said many times on this site but I have to stress the need to educate the general public on the destruction levels from this type of fishing. So again I say Go Go Greenpeace. Getting, and keeping, this stuff in the news will hopefully open some peoples eyes like I was able to do with my friend.

Sorry for the long story,

Arthur
 
ArchyNorth said:
I know it's been said many times on this site but I have to stress the need to educate the general public on the destruction levels from this type of fishing. So again I say Go Go Greenpeace. Getting, and keeping, this stuff in the news will hopefully open some peoples eyes like I was able to do with my friend.

:notworth: I am greatly impressed by your reaching out to your friend about this. My biggest beef with environmental organizations is that they are frequently so interested in rallying their members by being as polarized as possible that they alienate possible valuable allies. I believe that a great deal of positive progress can be made on environmental issues by reaching out to people who have sound sensibilities, but aren't (and don't want to be) "environmental zealots." Rather than embracing an "us vs. them" attitude, I think it's a great idea to educate the fishermen about the truth, and get their support in effecting change!

I think (although perhaps I am naive) that a lot of people in the fishing and forestry industries are very much like your friend-- but often, they have been brought into the "group think" of their communities to think that environmentalists are all unrealistic and idealistic and "out to get them." And likewise, many environmental groups seem to raise money and energize their members by vilifying fishermen, foresters, corporate leaders, and the like.

There are certainly bad people out there who propogate FUD (jargon, node: FUD) about environmental issues, but there are substantial numbers of people who are merely ignorant, and would be willing to be educated if they didn't have to put up with being (pre)judged. "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by ignorance" seems to apply here, if you interpret ignorance as including "just not knowing" as well as "deliberately avoiding knowing."

Because I agree with Greenpeace's stance with respect to bottom trawling, I haven't been inclined to mention this, but I think Greenpeace has frequently been guilty of taking political and strategic positions that are part of the problem more than part of the solution, frequently because of internal factions and a need to pander to their supporters idealized and romanticized positions on issues, even when those are at odds with what's actually good for the environment or what would make the most effective impact on the problems. I know a number of very smart people who care deeply about the evironment who have left Greenpeace in various degrees of disgust, as well as some people who have been attacked by Greenpeace as "the enemy" who actually would have been open to being (or even had been) Greenpeace supporters!

I feel mildly guilty for this rant, because I also respect Kat and :oshea: enough that I don't want to come across as saying supporting Greenpeace is bad or anything, but I really think that Greenpeace and other environmental organizations are stuck in a bad, intellectually inbred place that makes them much less effective than they could be. I'm also curious if other people have not seen these problems with Greenpeace, or if they just tolerate them because they believe in the cause? There seem to be a number of other folks who are concerned about this kind of thing, e.g. GreenSpirit.com is For Sale | BrandBucket http://www.lomborg.com/ and http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/feature_earth.asp

Anyway, just my :twocents: -- sorry if letting out my pent-up frustrations on effective environmentalism is a "downer"
 

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