Save the tuna
Greenpeace has just released its Red List of the twelve most unsustainable fish commonly eaten in New Zealand that most require urgent action to ensure the future of these species and the fisheries.
Meanwhile Metiria has just launched a petition calling on the Government to take urgent action to halt the over-exploitation of one of those fish - tuna:
Today, well over 4000 large foreign fishing vessels are plundering the Pacific waters. Technological advances mean large ships can catch as many fish in two days as a small Pacific nation can in a year. With tuna stocks decreasing in other oceans, more and more ships are moving into the Pacific. These practices are not sustainable.
Greenpeace says of tuna:
Foreign fleets from Japan, Taiwan, China, Korea, the US and the EU take 90% of Pacific tuna, and pay Pacific Island countries only around 6% of the landed catch value – of around $US3 billion. Pirate fishing exacerbates overfishing and seriously undermines any efforts to manage or conserve stocks. Pacific islanders are being robbed of the fish that is their primary source of protein, and the backbone of their economies.
Which means that we have social justice and poverty problem as well as an environmental one. Greenpeace says that the by-catch for Southern Bluefin Tuna can be up to twenty times greater than the amount of tuna caught, and can include threatened marine birds, turtles and fur seals. It recommends if you want to eat tuna:
… select skipjack tuna instead, but make sure it is either from the New Zealand fisheries (where the cooler waters avoid the bycatch of other tuna species) or from Pacific catches that use trolling or pole an line. Avoid skipjack from the Pacific purse seiner fisheries because they end up catching large amounts of immature bigeye and yellowfin who school together with skipjack.
The other eleven fish to avoid buying are orange roughy, oreo, shark, hoki, hake, swordfish, snapper, arrow squid, shrimp, patagonian toothfish and flatfish or flounder. And so, peripherally related, Robert Guyton has sent us this entry for our fish competition:
Here is my photo of flatfish! I found a glass fish plate, made a fibre-glass impression, poured concrete and made a dozen of these to affix to a concrete wall
August 12th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Now THIS is what I like about the Greens, keep up the good work, on this you have my full support.
GO MET!
August 12th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Now here is an example of some good Green action.
The only thing is there really isn’t much we can do to stop the plundering of the pacific, its probably going to get worse as well.
Most of those countries have no fish close by them and need to head down into the pacific in order to get food.
August 12th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Good progressive work from Met as usual. But I do wonder about this Greenpeace campaign. “Most unsustainable”? That phrase is really an admission that fishing as we know it is ALL unsustainable. It’s going to take very dramatic action to get fisheries “working” sustainably, and I think we all need to be up-front about the agenda: end fishing.
If people aren’t down with this, the movement risks the “secret agenda” spin attack. But we’re probably not clear on this ourselves. What is our end-game? Lots of fish, or an endless supply of dead fish?
The full link to the tuna petition is here:
http://www.greens.org.nz/conservation/tunapetition#attachments
A word for those vegetarians-from-the-future, the petition uses the words “billions of dollars worth of tuna”. I would sign this petition but I don’t like the underlying commercial and exploitative tone.
August 12th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Metiria’s work with the other tuna, freshwater eels, is worthy of praise as well. She is a politician truely working at flaxroot level. Anyone hearing her speak recognises that, even those who might hail from the other side of the fence. I say that because I’ve sat beside and talked with people at Metiria’s public meetings and that is their reaction.
August 12th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
The Greens on about a green issue! Who’d have thunk!
August 12th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
yawn.
August 12th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
greenfly Says:
August 12th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
> Metiria’s work with the other tuna, freshwater eels, is worthy of praise as well.
the real tuna. Why can’t those damn foreigners find another name for that ocean fish, rather than reusing a name that’s already got a perfectly good meaning.
August 13th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
or the other side of the hedge eh?
say, can’t we invite the canadians down here to start impounding a few fishing vessels?