Tuna canners answer Greenpeace tuna study

Hey, it's not illegal!

That's the response of tuna canners to the news in yestereday's blogfish post on the tuna mixup in canned tuna.

In other words, the law doesn't require tuna canners to tell European consumers the truth about what's in a can of tuna.

Note to tuna canners: so you think it's ok to tell consumers they're getting one kind of tuna, and then put something else in the can?

It may be legal, my friends, but it's not a good idea to mislabel tuna and you might want to fix that problem. Otherwise, the public will start losing confidence in canned tuna, and you'll have to do a lot of work to rebuild that confidence. Don't shoot the messenger.

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What's in that can of tuna?

Canned tuna is full of fishy secrets, according to Greenpeace.

A new study says that the cans have tuna, but not always the tuna that you're promised on the label.

Sometimes the cans have the wrong tuna, and sometimes a single can may have two different types of tuna, which Greenpeace says is illegal in the EU (I don't know if that's true).

Not a good thing if tuna companies want to build public confidence.

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Greenpeace fish head protest

What do you do if you want to save fish? If you're Greenpeace, you dump 5 tons of fish heads in front of the government Fishery Department.

What is the connection between fish heads and better government? According to Greenpeace:

Dead tuna heads for deadbeat tuna managers.

Paris, France — What does it take to get the governments responsible for the imminent collapse of the East Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna fishery to wake up and do something? What about a mock "Pirates of the Mediterranean" poster of the responsible ministers in pirate gear in The Economist? How about more than 10,000 emails? OK, how about several tonnes of dead tuna fish heads dumped on the doorstep of the French fisheries ministry?

What do you think? Will this protest be effective? Hard to say, but here's the
National Fisheries Institute response, with an astute critique:

But further along, far from the pun-riddled headlines, reports also say a Greenpeace delegation met with staff members of the agriculture and fisheries minister. But because of Greenpeace's insatiable appetite for inappropriate and illegal publicity stunts (used later to raise funds for the organization) no one is talking about its meeting with agriculture ministry staff. No, they're talking about dead fish heads on the ministry steps.

Once again the messenger has succeeded in upstaging his own message.

Is it true that the tuna head protest was primarily to gain attention and raise money? Well, at the bottom of the webpage describing the action, Greenpeace said:

Donate
Ads in the Economist and dead fish heads don't grow on trees. Help us continue to command the attention of decision makers by giving whatever you can.

This is a fairly tight linkage between a protest action and an appeal for donations, making it easy for critics to accuse Greenpeace of focusing only on the money.

Bluefin tuna are in deep trouble, and serious action is needed. Protests may help bring attention to the matter, but is it the right kind of attention? What do you think?

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Spinning a fishery decline

Is it a good thing or a bad thing for managers to cut back a sustainable fishery. Is it a problem that the fish decline? Or is it a good thing that managers respond to that decline? It seems to depend on how you look at the situation.

The MSC-certified sustainable Alaska pollock fishery must reduce fishing next year. Everyone seems to agree on that. But opinions diverge widely on how much to reduce fishing and what it all means.

According to Greenpeace, we're looking at a historic fishery collapse, signs that the entire Alaskan ocean has been devastated by a so-called "sustainable" fishery, because common sense has been thrown out the window due to the amount of money involved. Strong words.

But the fishery scientists who count the fish think that would be an overstatement.

The fishery stock assessment that will be the final word on the status of Alaska's pollock isn't done yet, and when it is done, that will be the best answer. Greenpeace is responding to some preliminary and incomplete scientific results, and may not find support from fishery scientists for their stark claims.

Meanwhile, here are the views of some of the people who catch pollock, although there's nothing on the current situation yet.

Blogfish is keenly intersted in how this turns out, and how the players respond. Stay tuned for more as the situation develops.

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Response to Greenpeace ocean dumping action

Early returns show Greenpeace losing by a landslide among ocean science bloggers. Craig of Deep-Sea News and Miriam of Oyster's Garter both weigh in with criticism for Greenpeace's recent ocean dumping.

Craig awards Greenpeace the "Not Having the Faintest Idea of What They Are Doing Award" and Miriam of Oyster's Garter points out that Greenpeace just put prime invasive species habitat in a sensitive area. Oops.

Phil Kline of Greenpeace offered a comment to my original post. I love ya, Phil, but I'm not buying the rationale. These boulders may do more harm than good, and I doubt that they'll be effective protection.

Nevertheless, I welcome Phil's response to my original post, and here he explains in his own words:

"There is a critical need to implement a network of fully-protected marine reserves and sustainable fisheries management in order to help reverse the dramatic decline in the ecosystems of the North Sea. The Sylt Outer Reef provides a perfect example of how we are failing to give our oceans the protection they require. The area has been officially recognized as being an important site for a variety of marine life and warranting protection under European environmental law and yet destructive activities are still allowed in the area ensuring that the environmental and conservation objectives can never been achieved. Our action was intended to give real protection to the site that is currently a 'paper park.'

The principle of non-violence is core to Greenpeace’s ethos and is borne out by our long history of successful non-violent direct action to protect the environment. This principle of non-violence is shepherded within Greenpeace by sound science and judgment. The fisherman were alerted to our presence and it was determined that the boulders would not be unsafe to vessels operating in the area. The boulders, however, were big enough to serve as an effective obstacle to the beam trawlers that strip mine the ocean floor in the area. This action is on par with the placing of similar obstacles to protect vital seagrass meadows as practiced in the Mediterranean.

By protecting this area, we have the opportunity to protect an ecosystem at its heart and publicly defend the need for an integrated marine management system that will allow sustainable fishing so that generations to come can enjoy the bounty of the seas.

Sadly there appears to be a general denial by government and the fishing industry about the highly damaged state of the North Sea and our oceans globally despite the mass of scientific evidence. The fishing industry is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the marine environment and urgent action is required if we are to prevent further collapses in stocks of commercially valuable fish and major ecosystem shifts. Please join us in protecting this area:

http://members.greenpeace.org/action/start.php?action_id=193

Phil Kline, Senior Oceans Campaigner, Greenpeace and former commercial fisherman"

Maybe we need some activists to board Zodiacs and drive themselves under Greenpeace's crane to stop the ocean dumping!

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