Greenpeace Orange Roughy Protest Meets Rough Response

NELSON, New Zealand, May 31, 2004 (ENS) - This morning Greenpeace New Zealand activists covered the building of the Orange Roughy Management Company in Nelson with a huge fishing net to protest deep sea destruction by the orange roughy fishery. The demonstration was broken up by angry fisheries workers who tore down the net and fought with the demonstrators.

A delicious, white-fleshed fish, orange roughy are long-lived and slow growing. After 20 years of intensive fishing, some populations are depleted.

The Motueka choir stood in the company doorway singing about destruction of life in the deep sea. Each singing activist held placards showing pictures of creatures wiped out by bottom trawl nets.

Greenpeacers and members of the Motueka choir under a net at the Orange Roughy Management Company (Photo by Peter Kemp courtesy Greenpeace)

The Orange Roughy Management Company's response was rough. Greenpeacers were kicked and dragged away by fishing industry workers. The fishing net was torn down. Cameras were smashed in an attempt to stop recording of the event.

Greenpeace Campaign Manager, Bunny McDiarmid, said the protest was staged to request the New Zealand fishing industry involved in high seas bottom trawling to stop deep sea destruction and support a global moratorium on the high sea.

Over 1,000 scientists from 60 countries, including New Zealand, issued a statement in December calling for a global moratorium on high seas bottom trawling. Greenpeace is working internationally and nationally to support this call.

"Research is showing that bottom trawling is destroying unique and fragile deep sea life in the effort to catch what amounts to a few fish. Scientists now consider bottom trawling to be the biggest threat to deep sea life, and are warning of extinctions of creatures virtually unknown to science and whole habitats being wiped out," said McDiarmid.

"The high seas are the global commons, they belong to all of us, not just the fishing industry. We must ensure that the benefits of bottom trawling are not taken at the total expense of other deep sea life," she said.

In 2001, 12 countries, including New Zealand, took approximately 95 percent of the reported high sea bottom trawling catch.

Last Thursday, CEO of the Orange Roughy Management Company, George Clement told Radio New Zealand that orange roughy bottom trawling is benign and that New Zealand had done more than most other countries to protect deep sea environments.

Angry fishing industry workers pull down the net Greenpeace threw over their company building. (Photo by Peter Kemp courtesy Greenpeace)

The deep sea is the last undiscovered frontier on the planet. Once thought to be void of life, scientists now estimate between 500,000 to 100,000,000 species live in the deep sea. Many of these species are situated around seamounts - underwater mountains.

"The Orange Roughy Management Company are being hypocritical," said McDiarmid. "On one hand boasting New Zealand has protected areas of the deep sea whilst on the other mounting a legal challenge against a decision to protect deep sea life within New Zealand's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)."

In September 2000, Fisheries Minister Pete Hodgson announced that 19 out of 860 underwater mountains inside our EEZ would be protected from bottom trawling, citing "scientific studies show that marine life on seamounts is diverse and vulnerable to the impacts of bottom trawling. A number of species found on seamounts are long-lived, slow growing and slow to reproduce."

The Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior is in waters off New Zealand investigating the environmental impacts of bottom trawl fishing.