Activists Escalate Protests Against Fishing of Endangered Bluefin Tuna

Environmental activists this week escalated their protests against fishing of the endangered bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean, prompting numerous encounters with fishermen that resulted in at least one injury. In one incident, fishermen threw a fishing gaff at Greenpeace members attempting to free tuna from nets, injuring one male activist’s leg. In a later confrontation, the owner of a French fishing trawler said a crew member was injured when a Greenpeace boat rammed the side of the vessel. Although the French fishing fleet was catching the tuna legally, Greenpeace said its actions were justifiable. “It didn’t matter if the fishery was legal, if it was pushing the species towards extinction,” protester Willie MacKenzie wrote on a Greenpeace blog. The protests come just months after the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species rejected a trade ban of the bluefin tuna, whose populations have plummeted more than 75 percent after decades of overfishing.