Just as international negotiators are gathered in Istanbul this week to discuss how best to regulate fishing in the Atlantic Ocean, the advocacy group Greenpeace released a shocking video of how tuna-fishing vessels are killing scores of sharks, rays and whales in the Pacific.
The video, which includes footage taken aboard a purse-seine vessel last year, shows the impact of using Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs) . (Warning: the video is a bit gory.) This floating gear attract a range of species, not just tuna, to the surface. As a result, the vessels end up hauling in and killing manta rays, whale sharks and other species.
In less than a month the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission will meet and discuss what conservation measures it should take for a range of marine species.
“Consumers have the right to know what is destroyed and discarded in order to fill their cans with tuna,” said Sari Tolvanen, a Greenpeace International oceans campaigner. “This shocking video is a wake-up call: we as consumers, can demand that retailers give shelf-space only to responsibly-caught tuna. Without significant changes to global fishing practices and more protected marine reserves across the world’s seas, we will literally fish away future tuna supplies, jobs and healthy oceans.”
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