The continued detentions of fishing vessels under Spanish and other EU flags by Norwegian patrols in Northeast Atlantic waters highlight the weakness of fishing regulations to take on the offenders and the lack of political willpower to put an end to these legal loopholes. This year, the fishing vessels Arosa 9, Arosa 12 and Arosa … Read more
The Moroccan netters are overfishing the stocks of swordfish and killing 15,000 dolphins, pilot whales, sperm whales and other cetaceans, as well as 100,000 sharks per year. As soon as the illegal fishing activity of the Italian and French drift netters was documented during the months of June and July, the Oceana Ranger research catamaran … Read more
The Director of Oceana in Europe, Xavier Pastor, has written a letter to the Italian Government’s Fisheries Minister, Mr. Paolo de Castro, in which he describes the preliminary results of the report that Oceana is preparing dealing with the Italian fleet’s use of illegal driftnets. This report, which will be sent to the European Union … Read more
During the Oceana Ranger’s recent expedition in the Tyrrhenian Sea, the crew on board the environmental organisation’s catamaran witnessed an interaction between illegal driftnetters and large purse-seiners congregating around the tuna fattening cages to the north of the Aeolian Islands in Sicily. This situation could well be taking place at other tuna-fattening farms. Once the … Read more
The Italian Legislative Department has recently backed the new “zero tolerance” policy recently announced by Paolo de Castro, the Italian Minister of Agriculture and Fishing, declaring it illegal for vessels to carry driftnets, known as “spadare” on board. These nets have been prohibited by the EU since 2002. This decision precedes the publication of a … Read more
Despite the fact that driftnets have been banned in the Mediterranean for many years, a fleet of Moroccan fishing vessels continues to use this destructive fishing gear in the Alboran Sea and the Straits of Gibraltar, setting nets up to 12 kilometres long. Oceana, the marine conservation organisation, estimates that this fleet is made up … Read more
A fleet of barely 20 fishing vessels manages to discard each year between 2,000 and 15,000 tonnes of anglerfish, generate more than 1,000 kilos of waste and “ghost nets” and overexploit stocks of anglerfish, deep-sea red crab and deep-sea sharks. Every day, more than 6,000 kilometres of fixed gillnets (known as rasco) are deployed in … Read more
The detention by Norwegian patrols of two vessels flying Spanish flags, apprehended while catching Greenland halibut, has once again highlighted the wide-ranging practice of rogue fishing by companies that have received subsidies from Galician and Spanish authorities. One of the detained vessels, the Monte Meixueiro, belongs to the Vigo-based company Valiela, S.A., which has received … Read more
The Galician businessman, Antonio Vidal, has been indicted by the US Administration for attempting to fraudulently enter into that country’s market some 25,000 kilos of fish protected by international conventions, in this case Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides) and Antarctic toothfish (Dissostichus mawsoni). (http://www.oceana.org/fileadmin/oceana/uploads/europe/reports/cp_usdep_antonio_vidal.pdf) Both Antonio Vidal and one of his companies, Fadilur S.A., have been … Read more
The EU Council of Fisheries Ministers is to debate next week the management of Mediterranean fisheries. Oceana condemns the fact that the EU has spent tens of millions of Euros in its attempt to eliminate driftnets, yet there are still some 200 European fishing boats that continue to use them. “European citizens are being swindled … Read more
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We have already protected nearly 4 million square miles of ocean and innumerable sea life - but there is still more to be done.
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