10 July 2007
Spain
The Spanish branch of Greenpeace said on Monday its Rainbow Warrior vessel had docked on Spain's Mediterranean coast overnight to study the coastline amid warnings over diminishing red tuna stocks.
"We cannot continue with the destruction of the Mediterranean's ecosystems, overfishing and the systematic concreting over of the coastline," the environmental group said in a statement.
"It is time for the politicians to take protective measures, time is running short," executive director Juan Lopez de Uralde said.
Rainbow Warrior is due to examine how "massive construction, overfishing pollution and climate change have destroyed a sea of which just one percent is protected", Greenpeace said, adding the vessel was in port at Sagunto, just north of Valencia and would stay in the region several weeks.
The organisation is in the midst of a public awareness campaign, whose slogan is "let's recover the Mediterranean".
"Many species have been over-exploited and some are on the verge of extinction, in particular large predators such as sword fish and red tuna, whose adult population has dropped 80 percent in the past 20 years," Greenpeace said.
Environmentalists from Greenpeace and the oceans section of the World Wildlife Fund said last year that too much demand for sushi from Japan was a major factor hitting red tuna stocks in the Mediterranean.
The price of a prize red tuna can top €50 000 (about R480 000) on the Japanese market.
Green campaigners regularly hold up Spain as an example of coastal over-development with property developers and municipal authorities often accused of development-related corruption.
