By Atuna.com
Greenpeace supports well-managed and controlled free school purse seining, says Oliver Knowles, senior oceans campaigner at Greenpeace.
Yesterday, a blog post written by Elaine Wilson for the website, Green Answers, misrepresented the environment group’s position on the fishing method, says Knowles.
“The blog indicates that Greenpeace is opposed to all purse seining. This is not the case. We oppose purse seining when used with FADs, or when seines are set around whale sharks or other non-target marine species. We don’t oppose well managed and controlled free school purse seining and advocate this alongside pole and line fishing as an alternative to purse seines set on FADs.â€
In her post, Wilson pictured it as if Greenpeace does not see purse seine fishing as a sustainable way to catch tuna. She writes: “Because the practice catches large amounts of fish in one trip, the environmental organization believes that it shouldn’t be used on fish populations that are suffering from overfishing or when the risk of by-catch is high. Because both of these exemptions apply to tuna populations, Greenpeace does not believe that purse seine fishing is an appropriate method of catching tuna,†Greenpeace now says this particular statement is not correct and does not represent their views and policy.
Greenpeace says: Unlike purse seining on fish-aggregating devices (FADs), purse seining on free schools of tuna results in very little by-catch of non-target species.