Environmentalists, tuna fishers battle at sea

[The Northerner]

ABOARD THE STEVE IRWIN – 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 on 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.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110611/ap_on_bi_ge/sea_shepherd_tuna

[LaurenG]

1. Good - go Steve Irwin

no fishing means no fishing. Too bad there has to be a reason for such a vessel.

[The Traveler]

2. Paul Watson and SSCS

cannot be accused of being shy. Anti-poaching intervention on the high seas is never a safe or easy task, and this is obviously something of a hot zone. Demonstrating what I regard as an incredible amount of cool, when approached by a NATO warship and commanded to identify itself or be destroyed, the Captain of the Steve Irwin (Watson) responded back with something like: "This is the Steve Irwin, and good morning to you, too!"

The bluefin is on the ragged edge of extinction right now. We are in the middle of the biggest, fastest extinction event in 260 million years .... happening right now. Our political and economic leadership do nothing but throw gas on those fires. Without groups like SSCS, Greenpeace, and a handful of others there would not even be a thin line of defence.