Honolulu - Greenpeace today hung a banner at Honolulu’s Aloha Tower reading “WCPFC: Don’t Let Time Run Out on Tuna”. The group is urging Pacific fishing nations, including the US, to agree on bold measures to protect Pacific tuna at the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) meeting taking place in Honolulu next week. The WCPFC meeting begins tomorrow, just as science shows the Pacific region’s tuna stocks are threatened by massive overfishing.
“Time and tuna are running out in the Pacific. This Honolulu meeting provides a chance for nations that fish in the Pacific to avoid repeating the failures of other tuna management meetings this year to create sustainable fisheries and healthy oceans,” said Phil Kline,Greenpeace USA oceans campaigner. “Greenpeace is demanding that the US and other fishing nations back a proposal by Pacific Island Countries to close large areas of international waters in the Pacific to purse seine fishing to reverse the disastrous impacts of overfishing and illegal pirate fishing on the region’s troubled bigeye and yellowfin tuna stocks and the people dependent on them,” continued Kline.
