Environmental NGO Greenpeace has anchored its biggest vessel Esperanza at Bangkok Port in Khlong Toei to launch a campaign against overfishing in the Gulf of Thailand.
Behind the Port’s OB Building, hundreds of students from schools across Bangkok formed a line today to board the former fireboat, now eco-warrior ship Esperanza. The 29-year-old watercraft is the newest and largest of the Greenpeace fleet, following in the wake of The Rainbow Warrior and The Arctic Sunrise.
The dockyards around Esperanza have been decorated with booths and exhibitions, with Greenpeace activists explaining to teenage students how overfishing poses a long-term threat to the country’s entire ocean ecosystem.
The arrival of Esperanza also signifies Greenpeace’s intentions to take concrete actions, rather than just relying on awareness-raising campaigns. The NGO submitted requests to Thailand’s Fisheries Department yesterday demanding that the government enforce rules about properly-sized fishing tools and enact stronger laws to convict those who use large and destructive nets and gear.
Greenpeace’s bid to authorities comes on the heels of a recently released report showing that commercial fishing operations have become too aggressive and that fish reproduction and the marine environment are being destroyed. The report claims that the average yield of a fishing operation in the Gulf of Thailand has been waning at an alarming rate – from 300 kilograms of fish per hour per fishing operation in 1961 to only 25 kilograms in 2011. Other examples of depleted stock: The stock of longtail tuna caught in Thailand dropped from around 70,000 tons in 2006 to less than 20,000 tons in 2010, while Spanish mackerel dropped from roughly 25,000 tons to 10,000 in the same time period.
“Sometimes people came to us and say: ‘You are a Greenpeace guy. You want us to stop fishing and we are going to lose our jobs’,” said Esperanza captain Waldemar Wichmann. “They are actually wrong. We want it the other way around. We love eating fish. They need to understand that we need to have a standard so that we can have fish forever.”
Visitors to Esperanza will also have a chance to catch up with these navigators and learn more about their exciting experiences on the high seas.
Wichmann – an Argentinian native who joined Greenpeace in 2000 and assumed his leading role in 2004 – has traveled across the globe, but one of the regions that overwhelmed him the most is the Arctic.
“Not many have been there,” Wichmann noted. “I was shocked to see an oil spill there, destroying the pristine area.”
Meanwhile German crewman Ocke Deutschmann recounted a bad experience when Esperanza dropped by at Singapore and the whole crew was searched as if they were criminals. But that was far from being exciting when comparing to his travel to a maritime zone where pirates dominated.
“It was pretty tense when I entered a marine land under control of pirates,” recalled Ocke Deutschmann, a German crew who has traveled to seven eight countries over the past three months and will end his post soon. “You never know whether or not a ship approaching you is a pirate ship.”
Esperanza will leave the Bangkok Port this Sunday for the Philippines. You can book your Esperanza tour here to learn about the Greenpeace cause and chat with Esperanza’s international crew.
Thailand’s multi-billion dollar fishing industry has been under fire in the media lately, for violations ranging from alleged human slavery to polluted prawns to overfishing. Thailand is the third-biggest exporter of seafood in the world, after Norway and China, and the biggest supplier of seafood to the United States.
Read the Coconuts Bangkok feature story on Early Mortality Syndrome in Thailand’s shrimp and prawn industry here.
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Photo: Kajornsak Intarapong
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Bangkok Port aka Khlong Toei Port
