How much scandal can fit in one can of tuna?

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Casson Trenor

ID: The Greenpeace airship A.E. Bates flies flies by the La Jolla peninsula near the headquarters of Chicken of the Sea canned tuna company to call attention to overfishing and bycatch issues.

We’ve seen things go from bad to worse in the conventional canned tuna industry over the last year. In 2011, with the launch of Greenpeace’s campaign to reform Chicken of the Sea, information on the sector’s destructive practices came to the forefront. Images of sharks, rays, and even cetaceans being callously slaughtered on tuna boats peppered the internet and ran rampant across social media. A tuna boat helipilot-turned-whistleblower, his voice distorted and face blacked out to ensure his anonymity, told the world about the horrors that were being committed in the open ocean in the name of cheap canned tuna. Greenpeace’s airship flew along a San Diego freeway, emblazoned with a demand for Chicken of the Sea to “stop ripping up the sea.” Continue reading →

Medieval Tuna Reloaded or Shark Vs. Mermaid Death Squad?

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Travis Nichols

We all know the conventional tuna industry is terrible. It’s cartoon-bad, video-game-villain-evil, worse than Wario, King Hippo, Dark Link, Sub-Zero, Gannon, Mother Brain, or Bowser. The companies that rip up our oceans for profit terrorize sea life like Clyde, Blinky, Inky, and Pinky terrorize Pac-Man, relentlessly chasing our heroes through tougher and tougher mazes until —–.

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Is Trader Joe’s breaking their promise to our oceans?

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Casson Trenor

Greenpeace’s oceans campaign is experiencing a little déjà vu when it comes to a certain grocery store and their seafood policy.

In the summer of 2009, after a Greenpeace report ranking Trader Joe’s as having one of the worst seafood policies, thousands of customers spoke up with their concerns. The national grocery chain was selling unsustainable seafood items to an unsuspecting public, slurping up profits made from destructive activities like overfishing, bottom trawling, and fishing depleted stocks. Customers and activists across the United States sent the company messages demanding that Trader Joe’s cease their behavior and adopt a sustainable and environmentally-conscious seafood program. Continue reading →

Greenpeace explores underwater canyons, calls for their protection

Posted on July 12, 2012 by John Hocevar

Greenpeace has returned to the world’s largest underwater canyons, here in the Bering Sea, to continue our efforts to protect these amazing ecosystems.

Today, factory trawl ships pull up over a million tons of fish here each year and their enormous nets scrape along the seafloor, destroying coral habitats in these submarine canyons that are critical for fish, crabs and other marine life.

After years of Greenpeace and others calling for their protection, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council declined once again in 2006 to protect these canyons, saying there wasn’t enough information available about the canyons to justify action.

We are not very good at taking no for an answer when it comes to defending the planet, so we took the Council’s decision as a challenge. In 2007, we set out with the Greenpeace ship Esperanza, along with two small submarines, to explore the canyons and provide the council with the data it said was missing.

These corals, sponges, and other marine life are currently unprotected, and could be destroyed by enormous trawl nets dragged through Zhemchug Canyon. Continue reading →

The 2012 Seafood Sustainability Scorecard

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Casson Trenor

The devastation wrought by global industrialized fishing continues on a massive scale, and in spite of overwhelming evidence and strong warnings from the scientific community, we continue to plunder our seas. Populations of the ocean’s apex predators – sharks, tuna, swordfish, and similar animals – have dropped by as much as 90 percent. Bycatch remains a scandalous problem: each day, an enormous portion of the world’s total seafood catch is tossed over the sides of fishing boats due to inefficient, indiscriminate fishing methods. The worst of the destructive fishing practices, bottom trawling, is responsible for 80 percent of all bycatch incurred globally.

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Greenpeace’s Carting Away the Oceans report has evaluated supermarket sustainability since 2008, and up until this year no retailer had earned a green rating. This year, for the first time, the CATO report features two retailers that have earned green ratings, vaulting them to the top of the list. Find out who topped the list.

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Online Activists Besiege the Mermaid’s Facebook Page

Posted on February 17, 2012 by phenriques

Last week alarmed consumers from across the country began commenting on Chicken of the Sea’s Facebook page. Last week in Orange County, a small group of those consumers met over vegan pizzas to pester and persuade the tuna giant to switch to sustainable fishing methods. Several of us that had posted the night before had already been blocked from the Chicken of the Sea page and our comments had been deleted. Obviously, the mermaid has something to hide. But not to worry! We documented the whole process with screen shots of our messages, so Chicken of the Sea can’t escape so easily.

With the parent company Thai Union’s United Kingdom tuna brand John West already committed to protecting our oceans with FAD-free purse seine nets and pole and line methods of fishing, Chicken of the Sea really has no more excuses. If they could stand behind the way they treat the source of their profits, they wouldn’t have to hide their consumers’ demands.