Supertrawler held in port by Greenpeace
By Lewis Smith
January 31 2012 Lewis Smith
Greenpeace/Staats
One of Europe’s largest trawlers has been prevented from leaving port by Greenpeace activists.
The Maartje Theadora, a 141 metre German supertrawler, was tied to the quayside in Ijmuiden in the Netherlands by activists who wanted to highlight overfishing and a “systematically mismanaged fishery policy”.
Greenpeace campaigners hauled a steel cable around the ship, secured at each end to the quayside, and attached locks to the vessel’s own cables in an attempt to prevent it setting off on another fishing expedition.
The vessel can hold more than 4,000 tonnes of fish, catching and processing up to 200 tonnes a day. It is able, calculates Greenpeace, to catch as many fish in a day as 50 traditional African fishing boats in a year.
Pavel Klinckhamers, one of the Greenpeace activists, said the ship was prevented from sailing in order to bring attention to the need for the European Union’s Common Fisheries Policy to be reformed.
“The reform of the Common Fisheries Policy could very well be the last chance to stop overfishing, restore the seas and keep sustainable fishermen in business.”
He added that the intention of the protestors was to keep the vessel moored in port as long as possible, despite the intense cold. Police were at the port and the activists were prepared to resist efforts to remove them from boats surrounding the super trawler.
But Gerard van Balsfoort, president of the Pelagic Freezer-Trawler Association, to which the Maartje Theadore’s owners belong, said Greenpeace was targeting the wrong fleet in its anxiety to get publicity for its concerns about overfishing.
He said that in the recent special report by the European Court of Auditors that identified overcapacity among Europe’s fishing fleets, the pelagic fleet was hailed as an exception.
Mr van Balsfoort said it was the third time in the last two months that Greenpeace had taken action against freezer trawlers.
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