February 15th marks the beginning of the public trial of the Tokyo 2- Junichi and Toru- who were  detained by Japanese authorities after  exposing corruption with the whaling industry.  But thanks to the recent findings of a working group of the UN Human Rights Council, now the Japanese authorities are also perched on the scales of justice…and a thousand boxes of whale meat couldn’t help them tip the scales in their favour.

Sign a pledge and stand with Toru and Junichi and show the Japanese government that they cannot silence those who take a stand for the whales and justice will be served to those truly on trial.

Today Loblaw announced it will be removing some “at risk” seafood species from sale.  Great news! It’s great to see Redlist removal momentum continuing after west-coast retailers, Overwaitea, followed by Safeway, went public with their initiatives last year.

Of Greenpeace Redlist species, Overwaitea removed orange roughy, shark, yellowfin tuna and swordfish, in addition to other species not found on our Redlist.

Safeway has removed arctic surf clams, Chilean sea bass, swordfish, sharks, orange roughy and skates and rays. Safeway now sells 6 of the 15 Redlist species which is a major improvement from 12 of 15 they were selling at the time of our last ranking.

I’m interested to know which ones Loblaw removed, as the release didn’t specify and I’m also interested to know from which stores they will be removed, as the release says in ’select stores,’ not all stores.

UPDATE!

In response to this announcement Greenpeace released a press release pasted below but since then we’ve learned the species that Loblaw removed including sharks, orange roughy, skates and Chilean sea bass (Patagonian toothfish) and that Loblaw is suggesting alternatives that are not part of a sustainable solution. These include:  …

Yup, seems they did. As such, many of you may be asking yourself how it could be possible that the Marine Stewardship Council  (MSC) would actually certify this fishery as sustainable.  Well, you’re not alone. David Suzuki (see recent article ) and other prominent ocean/fish/environmental gurus have wondered the same thing and it’s left me wondering- how low will the MSC go?

I mean can you get much lower than collapsed? Is a judicial inquiry not indicative of some, um, “issues” with the management of this fishery? What about the coastal First Nations and bears and other wildlife that depend on them and are coming up empty handed/pawed/beaked? Does this sound like a fishery worthy of a seal of approval? Call me crazy but NO WAY!

If this news is any hint of the outcome of another fishery shockingly up for certification, the longline swordfish fishery, then things can I guess get lower. Oh MSC, other than confusing eco-conscious consumers and placing further demand on ailing fish stocks, what have you done for the oceans lately?

Could it be possible?! Two bluefin fishing nations take a stand to protect the ailing bluefin?! According to recent news,  Italy has announced it will halt fishing for a year and is thought to support a CITES listing and, just today, media in France is reporting that France will support listing under Appendix I of CITES- thus support a trade ban.  This is a great step towards getting the EU onside to support a trade ban, but the bluefin aren’t off the hook yet.  Stay tuned to see how the next days and weeks unfold in the  lead-up to the CITES meeting in March.

What do pyramid schemes, the Eiffel tower and the annual Seafood Summit have in common? All have some sort of connection to triangles…and pyramid schemes were at the heart of the Summit’s keynote speech yesterday by eminent and entertaining Canadian fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly.

Pauly used disgraced financier Madoff’s pyramid schemes to illustrate our current mismanagement of human interaction with marine life. Sustainability should mean that we are fishing only limited quantities of fish equivalent to the interest on our global marine capital. Instead, we are robbing the banks by taking massive amounts of fish using industrial bottom trawlers and other factory vessels. Not only are we overfishing vulnerable species like orange roughy (a deep sea fish which can live 100 years) and bluefin tuna. We are also farming carnivores instead of directly eating the feed fish like anchovies further down on the food chain.

If we don’t want our complex ecosystem pyramids to collapse like so many Madoff schemes, we need to take strong action – within and beyond the halls of seafood summits.

Beth Hunter, Oceans campaign coordinator – writing from Paris