Source: Minivan News
The Rainbow Warrior –flagship of environmental NGO Greenpeace– is visiting the Maldives as part of a two-month tour of the Indian Ocean.
Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior
“Greenpeace has come to the Indian Ocean in order to learn about fishing activities in the region, and to talk to communities, governments, officials and the tuna fishing industry, with the intention of working together to combat overfishing and to stop destructive and illegal fishing,†the international organization stated.
During the vessel’s visit to the Maldives, the crew will document the pole and line fishery in the southern atoll, hold a one-day conference on sustainable tuna, involving political, fishing and commercial sectors joint monitoring and surveillance with the Maldivian coast guard in Maldivian waters. The vessel will be opened to school children in Laamu Gan.
Executive Secretary of the International Pole and Line Foundation (IPNLF), Athif Shakoor, who is coordinating the Greenpeace visit, told Minivan News that the Rainbow Warrior’s visit was significant for the Maldives, as was the organization’s endorsement of pole and line fishing methods.
“Pole and line fishing is more sustainable and central to employment in many communities,†he explained.
As a sustainable fishing method, pole and line fishing could be marketed as a premium brand and the higher prices passed to the fishermen, Shakoor said.
Minivan News has previously reported that retail premiums for pole and line-caught fish were being largely absorbed by the supermarket chains that sold them, leaving Maldivian fishermen to compete with the technologically-advanced and substantially less sustainable fishing vessels of other nations.
In October 2011, Minivan News reported concerns from fisheries authorities and industry that the country was effectively “under siege†by the vessels of other nations – particularly the French and Spanish – which had ringed the Maldives’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) with ‘Fish Aggregation Devices’ (FADS).
Fish such as tuna are naturally attracted to the floating object, such as a buoy, typically fitted with a sonar device capable of determining the quantity of fish below, and a satellite uplink that communicates this to the nearby fishing vessel. The vessel’s net does not discriminate between the predators and scavengers attracted by the target fish population around the FAD.
The local canning industry has also expressed concern about being unable to buy fish at a competitive price from local fishermen, who were instead selling their catch to canning conglomerates in Thailand, which were then labeling and exporting the product as a ‘Maldivian’ pole and line product with little oversight of the supply chain.
