Greenpeace New Zealand Weblog

this blog has been kindly submitted by our committed receptionist Ginette Adams…

I’m a big fan of protest stickers; ‘GE Free NZ’, ‘Save Tazzies Forests’, Greenpeace Supporter’, ‘One Less Car’… my bike, my diary, my fridge, they’re all covered in the things. So last week, I’m cycling through Auckland and on the back of a car I see a real cool one I haven’t seen before for a group called KASM. Proving that these stickers definitely help get the word out, I checked on the internet to see what they’re all about and I found out about an amazing group tackling a serious issue that has potential consequences for the marine environment.

I thought I’d share… Read more »

The pirate fishing vessel, Luna Rossa, cut off its illegal driftnet and fled from the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise. © Greenpeace / Gavin Parsons

There’s an interesting story about Tuna over at the Greenpeace International blog today.

On the tail of the Rainbow Warrior’s recent tour of the Mediterranean MaltaToday has been served with seven libel suits for daring to publish the facts about one of the great fisheries scandals in the region: tuna laundering.
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Meet Sad Fish. He’s a little on the rotund side and a tad more furry than most other fish but he’s fronting the new seafood campaign here in New Zealand and we’re glad to have him on our side.

On Sunday over at Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World, along with Sad Fish, we launched the new Greenpeace Red Fish List - a handy little wallet sized guide designed to help you avoid buying the most unsustainable seafood.
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Raech wrote a great blog last week about a nail-biting Saturday, wetsuit clad and on stand by to save a whale from beaching. helping with whale rescue. It’s serious business. A lot of whales die after stranding but this little video takes a look at the lighter side of whales on beaches …

One ship from SOF’s flotilla on July 20

After the USA company Queensland Energy Resources (QER) announced its proposal to build a shale oil mine in Whitsunday, Australia, Save Our Foreshore (SOF) - a local community group aiming to protect foreshore land in the area - launched a campaign against this destructive initiative.

QER is an integrated resources and energy company owned by the Manhattan-based investors, Ziff brothers, which also owns most of Queensland’s known oil shale resources.,

Created in 2004, SOF says that informing people is crucial in this kind of fight, and to this end it organised a Boat Rally and a public information day on Airlie Beach, on Sunday 20 July.

It is common knowledge that fossil fuels are a short-term, dirty solution to a large problem, and squeezing oil from stone (shale is basically oily rock) is an incredibly polluting and energy-intensive operation. That this operation should be contemplated in one of Australia’s most pristine marine environments is perplexing. Read more »

Pirate fishing vessel

An illegal fishing ship whose captain is rumoured to have been murdered has thrown plans for the World Surfing Championship in Bali into chaos by running aground on the island’s best surf break and it turns out to be  the longliner (Ho Tsai Fa 18) - which we recently confronted in the Pacific Commons not once but twice .

Read more »

Greenpeace receptionist Raechel Thomas had a nail-biting Saturday, wetsuit clad and on stand by to save a whale! Here’s her story…

When I heard that Project Jonah (a whales protection group) was running Marine Mammal Medic Courses, I jumped at the chance to get involved. The course was a one day intensive down at Long Bay Beach, designed to equip people to be able to assist in saving stranded whales. New Zealand has the highest number of strandings in the world, but it also has the highest rescue success rate - 95%. Besides illness and injury, whales strand because of landforms and the tide. Regular stranding points around the world all have the same characteristics - a thin wedge of land/sand, possibly hooked around. That coupled with incoming/outgoing tides churn the sand and therefore the whales’ sonar doesn’t read there is land behind it. Read more »

Commercial set netting and trawling in shallow waters is threatening Hector and Maui dolphins. Maui numbers have dropped as low as 100 on the North Island.

New Zealand’s Hector and Maui dolphins – the smallest and rarest dolphins in the world - are critically endangered.

In order to help protect the dolphins, zoologist Gemma McGrath founded Music 4 Maui’s in October 2007. The project fuses NZ music with marine conservation, and aims to both raise awareness of the dolphin’s plight, as well as raise funds to help them.

Gemma convinced a selection of talented kiwi musicians to donate songs for the dolphins, building up the Music 4 Maui’s album. The first compilation titled ’Songs to save a species’ was released on June 16th and includes artists such as Minuit, The Black Seeds, Sola Rosa and Ariana Tikao. Music reaches people and talks to their spirit, so these songs about the ocean and the dolphins, the fishing industry and extinction are good means to promote positive changes. Read more »

No it’s not a Split Enz song it’s a new international fish red list. In a new report, Greenpeace has shown that in the U.S., most supermarkets purchase seafood with little consideration of where it came from, how it was caught, or how fish stocks are fairing.

The world’s oceans are often seen as containing a limitless source of food. However, as vast as they are they are they are not an inexhaustible resource, and after years of overfishing, fish stocks are crashing one after the other. Our fishing fleets have gone further and further afield and trawled to deeper and deeper depths and the fish are literally running out. Read more »

As climate change highlights new challenges facing businesses, one practice has been attracting attention, and that is the strange fishing trade going on between New Zealand and China.

Fishing industry heavyweights such as Talley’s Group Limited ship gutted fish to China for thawing, processing and re-chilling, only to ship it back to New Zealand for sale. In a recent meeting in Parliament, the Green Party expressed its concern to the Minister for Economic Development, Pete Hodgson that this ‘bizarre situation’ undermines both the prime minister ’s goal of carbon neutrality and kiwi workers ’ jobs.

It is a bizarre situation indeed, although the Ministry claims that virtually no seafood is imported back from China, whereas China makes up about 10 percent of New Zealand’s export market. Read more »