Defending our Oceans: The story so far

Ok, any blather.net fan will probably realise that I work part-time as an on-board web editor (blogger) for Greenpeace. Earlier this year, I was on board the Esperanza off the coast of Africa, helping expose the scandals of pirate fishing. This was part of an ongoing project called “Defending our Oceans“. It started in November 2005 in the Southern Ocean and it’s still running! The Esperanza has been around the world – and I’ll be joining it again next month.
In the meantime, here’s a dramatic movie showing the expedition so far:

More Ocean Defenders TV »
(including some very interesting stuff about whaling)

daev
Chief Bottle Washer at Blather
Writer, photographer, environmental campaigner and "known troublemaker" Dave Walsh is the founder of Blather.net, described both as "possibly the most arrogant and depraved website to be found either side of the majestic Shannon River", and "the nicest website circulating in Ireland". Half Irishman, half-bicycle. He lives in southern Irish city of Barcelona.

4 comments

  1. Finaly got round to lookin at this stuff dave.
    Yet again I have the same old complaint about the lack of alternatives solutions being supplied by Greenpeace, its easy to shout and rant about these things, but people still gotta eat. I read about other projects that ye are involved with and have seen where providing education and viable alternatives have worked, but no one seems to have gotten round to that yet regards fishing. I know you’ve got some ideas as to how this can be done, I’d like to hear them

  2. Podge – can you be more specific? The whole point of some of the fishing campaigns is that local people have to eat – that fish is being whisked from under their noses for restaurant food in developed countries.

  3. Yeah but those of us in the developed countries still like Fish n chips too.
    I understand the gist of the argument yer making, in that its kinda the same as the argument that was goin on at home about the Spanish supertrawlers overfishing the Irish sea and the Atlantic coast to the point of the near extinction of Cod. The demand is not going to go away and unlike Whale it would take a collective masterstroke to convince people not to eat fish.
    I’d like to hear some kinda suggstion as to how we can maintain the current market supply without wiping out all the fish, and without causing the unemployment of many small to medium fishing operations by lumbering them with untenable government legislation that all but bans them from fishing. and its always the little guy that gets sqeezed, in yer video ye purport to be after the globalfishinorganisation, but the truth is that these few organisations are the only ones who would be capable of absorbin the kinda losses that a knee jerk pinko leftie reactionary piece of legislation would cause.
    so again how do we keep fish on the menu in a sustainable way, its just not good enough to tut tut and say ‘oh but you cant eat THAT’
    provide alternative solutions, I know you’ve got something

  4. Podge – my personal opinion is that it is not possible to maintain the current market supply – or the current *methods* of supply without wiping out the fish.
    I’m all for international marine reserves – and not leaving it to individual countries to sort out. Undoubtedly there will be somejobs losses, and lots of changes – it’s worth nothing that since cod fishing collapsed on the grand banks, some of the local fisherman have been engaged by the Canadian government in carrying out catching-and-tagging projects to help rebuild the stocks. Not that the stock is growing very fast, mind you.
    Check out this:
    http://oceans.greenpeace.org/en/our-oceans/marine-reserves/roadmap-to-recovery
    And the full report:
    http://oceans.greenpeace.org/highseas-report
    http://oceans.greenpeace.org/raw/content/en/documents-reports/roadmap-to-recovery.pdf

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