As you know, we're on the Rainbow Warrior as part of an international campaign to protect the deep sea. While we're out here in the middle of the ocean, things are happening elsewhere...
News arrived this morning from our colleagues in Greenpeace New Zealand, who had just performed a peaceful land-based protest at the Orange Roughy Management Company headquarters in Nelson, a major fishing port in the South Island.
The Orange Roughy Management Company is an umbrella organisation, representing all orange roughy fishing companies in New Zealand, and is currently legally challenging the closure by the government of just 19 out of 860 underwater mountains within New Zealand's Exclusive Economic Zone.
Bottom trawling for orange roughy is a major cause of deep sea destruction in the waters around New Zealand and many other places around the world, like the South Indian Ocean.
At the protest in Nelson, Greenpeace activists draped a huge net over the Orange Roughy Management Company building, and painted the words "deep sea destruction" across an outside wall. Meanwhile, the local Motueka choir stood beneath the net, singing and holding placards of creatures from the deep sea.
Unfortunately, they received a rather extreme reaction from the fishing industry, who seem to take the law into their own hands. People were kicked and dragged away from the building, cameras were smashed...
just wanted to add a few words about the protest in Nelson...the whole thing was a total surprise, we thought it would be a quiet one, over early in the morning--- but what actually happened shows the potential fury of the industry at our campaign, as well as the easy and unfortunate misunderstanding that we are simply "anti-fishing" in general, or meaning to threaten people's livelihoods.
p.s.Even when we were being attacked by angry men in gum boots it was more pleasant than trying to make lunch in a heaving pitching galley, as much as I miss you all.I thought of you guys the whole time...
