Environmentalists, tuna fishers battle at sea

[xchrom]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SEA_SHEPHERD_TUNA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-06-11-14-32-48

ABOARD THE STEVE IRWIN (AP) -- Tuna fishermen battled environmentalists on the Mediterranean, hurling heavy links of chain at them as the environmentalists attempted to disrupt illegal tuna fishing under the no-fly zone north of Libya on Saturday.

The fishermen also attempted to lay a rope in front of the activists' boat, the Steve Irwin - owned by the U.S.-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society - hoping to disable it. Environmentalists responded with fire hoses and stink bombs.

Several hundred feet above the fray circled a French fighter jet, summoned by the fishermen - who claimed, falsely, that activist divers were trying to cut their net.

The 60-meter (195-foot) Steve Irwin, named after the Australian conservationist who died in 2006, left the Sicilian port of Syracuse early Friday, heading for a rendezvous with a smaller, faster sister ship, the Brigitte Bardot, just north of Libyan waters. The Bardot had traversed the area and reported that more than 20 purse seiners were operating there.

[Warrior Dash]

1. Fisherman catch fish so that hungry people can eat.

When do environmentalists want people to starve?

[xchrom]

2. & when the fish are gone? what do the people eat then.

your sig line? de toqueville got it wrong.
democracy is never very interested in equality -- it was -- quaint -- that he thought that.

[Bigmack]

4. Illegal tuna fishing...

Find out something about what's happening to tuna stocks before you embarrass yourself further.

Start with something simple... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_bluefin_tuna

[Warrior Dash]

5. If it's illegal, call the police.

[Bigmack]

7. Again... Google is your friend...

the EU has virtually no enforcement agents, even though it has made the fishing illegal.

Stopping piracy... is that a bad thing, now?

[Warrior Dash]

8. Not at all...and these anti-fishing lunatics should be stopped at once.

[Bigmack]

11. Anybody who doesn't recognize the need for...

regulation in the face of declining.. even crashing.. fish stocks is the lunatic.

I seem to remember something about buffaloes.

[Shagbark Hickory]

3. Once again the sea shepherds enforce the laws that the governments do not.

[Bonobo]

9. With no standing to do so --and are thus vigilantes at best and

pirates at worst.

[Shagbark Hickory]

10. I probably won't be arguing with that assessment however someone has to do it.

Or there is a lot of marine life that will disappear.

And the commercial harvesting of whales and dolphins and seals is very disturbing to me. It's like if a corporation when down to Mexico where there's a lot of stray dogs roaming the streets and started hunting them for export back to a country where dog is a delicacy. If a government didn't do anything to stop it, then I'd support an organization that did even if it meant they were vigilantes and employed some gray area practices.

[Bigmack]

12. And the people stealing fish are not pirates? ...

Why not just wait until all the stocks crash and then we can all wonder where they went.

In 1968 the cod catch from the Grand Banks was 810,000 tons; in 1974 it was 34,000 tons.

I see the fight over tuna in the Med as an opening skirmish in a world-wide war over food.

I choose to side with the good guys.

[amborin]

6. K&R