Author: earthfirst

On a warm night in July 2012, off the island of Ugl­jan in the Croa­t­ian Adri­at­ic, two activists slipped into the water near a line of huge fish farms. Secu­ri­ty boats patrolled the perime­ter of the vast cir­cu­lar nets, as guards sta­tioned on a near­by hill kept watch through the night. And for good rea­son: the thou­sands of bluefin tuna in the farms, des­tined for the tables of Japan­ese sushi restau­rants, are worth mil­lions. Indi­vid­ual fish rou­tine­ly sell for more than $1,500 at whole­sale mar­kets in Tokyo and clos­er to home. The Croa­t­ian tuna had been caught as juve­niles under a loop­hole in inter­na­tion­al law, and were being “fat­tened up” before head­ing to mar­ket.

Wear­ing tac­ti­cal div­ing gear, the divers arrived at the first net, slic­ing three-quar­ters of its length and send­ing bluefin stream­ing out. The divers swam to anoth­er net, repeat­ing the process, and then head­ed home. The secu­ri­ty teams cir­cling above were none the wis­er until the fol­low­ing day. The activists, from a group known as the Black Fish, were long gone. The raid was sim­i­lar to a pre­vi­ous attack in Sep­tem­ber 2010, when Black Fish divers freed dol­phins from hold­ing pens near Tai­ji, Japan.

A sailor pre­pares to head out to sea with five 2.5‑kilometer nets in ant’Agata di Militel­lo, Sici­ly; 2.5 kilo­me­ters is the legal lim­it, but Mediter­ranean fish­er­men often join mul­ti­ple nets of this size togeth­er to get around the law.

Since the action in Japan and Croa­t­ia, the group has turned its sights on drift nets—long, fine nets sus­pend­ed from buoys, typ­i­cal­ly across fish migra­tion paths. Banned in inter­na­tion­al waters since 1992, the longest nets, which can stretch 50 miles behind indus­tri­al-sized fish­ing ves­sels, are asso­ci­at­ed with almost indis­crim­i­nate killing of marine life. Their mesh size can be as lit­tle as ten cen­time­ters, mean­ing young fish are caught before they can repro­duce. Sea tur­tles, dol­phins, and sharks also fall prey, and since they’re ille­gal to catch, they’re returned, often mor­tal­ly wound­ed, to the ocean.

In spite of the ban put in place at the urg­ing of the UN, the prac­tice con­tin­ues. From the Indi­an Ocean to the North Pacif­ic, ille­gal drift nets are still in use, and no prop­er author­i­ty exists to mon­i­tor their use or bring pros­e­cu­tions. In the Mediter­ranean, their use is often con­trolled by var­i­ous mobs, accord­ing to the Black Fish’s founder Wietse van der Werf: “Orga­nized crime and cor­rup­tion is a big part of why drift net­ting car­ries on in the Mediter­ranean. The Cal­abri­an Mafia is known to run the biggest oper­a­tion in Europe, right along­side the biggest cocaine-run­ning operation—they’re pret­ty much one and the same.”

And they’re hard to catch, said Wietse. When EU inspec­tors roll around, cor­rupt cap­tains will take their nets to pieces, head to sea, or “re-flag” their boats, dodg­ing Euro­pean rules by hoist­ing a North African flag. A few years ago, Ital­ian fish­er­men were giv­en mil­lions to hand over their drift nets and invest in more “sus­tain­able” gear—they imme­di­ate­ly spent the cash on big­ger, bad­der drift nets. These were either stored in non-EU coun­tries or over­looked by cor­rupt Ital­ian offi­cials (paid off, iron­i­cal­ly, using the mon­ey set aside for new­er, less dam­ag­ing nets).

A mem­ber of the Black Fish toy­ing around with a quad­copter sup­plied by Shad­owView.

So ille­gal fish­er­men have to be caught actu­al­ly using the nets in order to be brought to jus­tice. Which is why the Black Fish have begun to invest in drones. With the help of Shad­owView, a non­prof­it which pro­vides char­i­ties and NGOs with unmanned heli­copters and planes, the group has begun mon­i­tor­ing ports for signs of ille­gal kit. They’ve just fin­ished a series of “port inspec­tions” in Alba­nia and Italy, using cam­eras mount­ed on small “quad­cop­tor” drones to gath­er evi­dence from above.

Pos­ing as beach-tow­elled vaca­tion­ers, Wietse and his under­cov­er crews nor­mal­ly go unno­ticed until their lit­tle robot is buzzing above a bunch of pissed off fish­er­men. In oth­er spots, like Libya and Tunisia, drones tend not to go down so well, so the Black Fish use hid­den cam­eras and a tourists’ blank expres­sion to wan­der around ports with impuni­ty. The group is still ana­lyz­ing their videos and pic­tures from this year, but have already spot­ted sev­er­al “black­list­ed” ves­sels, each tied to ille­gal fish­ing in the past. A few weeks ago, they spot­ted dead sea turtles—“Among the most high­ly pro­tect­ed species in the world,” Wietse said—tangled in Tunisian nets.

A Black Fish mem­ber log­ging the reg­is­tra­tion num­bers of fish­ing boats that have been black­list­ed by the EU.

How­ev­er, to prop­er­ly catch the esti­mat­ed 500 ille­gal Mediter­ranean drift­net­ters in action will take big­ger, more expen­sive drones. By next year, Wietse plans to run big, “fixed wing,” petrol-pow­ered unmanned planes, with a much big­ger range, which should be able to con­clu­sive­ly prove ille­gal drift net use. “When gov­ern­ments can’t do any­thing about such a vital prob­lem,” he told me, “vol­un­teers with a lit­tle time and mon­ey can make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence.”

Also next year, the Black Fish plan to score a sec­ond­hand coast-guard ship to use as a plat­form for drones and speed­boats fast enough to catch drift net users red-hand­ed. They also have a plan to cre­ate a diplo­mat­ic inci­dent and force the issue: “Once we have the ship,” Wietse told me, “we want to put a British flag on it and then try to enforce the law some­where close to, say, Spain. This would anger the Span­ish and force them to pick sides—illegal poach­ers or Euro­pean law. With any luck, this will cre­ate an inter­na­tion­al prob­lem and force gov­ern­ments to crack down.”

Wietse is crit­i­cal of celebri­ty fish­ing activists Jamie Oliv­er and Hugh Fern­ley-Whit­tingstall who sup­port the relax­ation of rules over fish that are dis­card­ed for being too small or out­side of quo­tas, argu­ing that their approach is just a way of allow­ing young fish to be caught and sold legal­ly. He’s also skep­ti­cal of so-called “sus­tain­able” fish­ing in gen­er­al, which he says “legit­imizes destruc­tive fish­ing,” offer­ing lit­tle more than a warm glow to “eth­i­cal” shop­pers.

The shell of a sea tur­tle, one of the world’s most pro­tect­ed species, found in Tunisia.

When they’re not anger­ing Mafia boat crews, the Black Fish are train­ing teams in div­ing and oth­er skills in order to widen the organization’s scope. Wietse likens his plan to the ear­ly days of police forces, in which pri­vate mili­tias were formed into orga­nized forces in their own local areas. They’ve made a film with the help of vol­un­teers, and are spend­ing the win­ter lec­tur­ing and rais­ing mon­ey to buy their ship.

Over­fish­ing isn’t the only tar­get of activists with drones. Shad­owView are work­ing with the con­ser­va­tion char­i­ty SPOTS to catch poach­ers at secret loca­tions in South Africa, with the Sea Shep­herd group film­ing ille­gal seal slaugh­ter on the Namib­ian coast, and with the League Against Cru­el Sports in the UK to film ille­gal fox hunts. Pro­test­ers have been using drones to spy on cops for a cou­ple of years now, and their price is falling.

But for Wietse, per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, drift­nets and over­fish­ing are still the main aim: “The death of the seas is the worst envi­ron­men­tal prob­lem we face, and using drift nets is like destroy­ing a for­est to catch a cou­ple of wild boar—it’s just insane.” Luck­i­ly, accord­ing to him, “It’s also one of the eas­i­est prob­lems to solve—it just needs to be addressed now.”