Endangered sharks are being brutally wiped out in the Pacific Ocean at record pace by industrial fishermen — and environmental activists are now exposing the “devastating” practice to the world.
A team from Greenpeace, the global environmental campaign organization, claimed that a Spanish ship north of New Zealand killed three endangered mako sharks in a mere 30 minutes.
A crew from the nonprofit, including a trained shark handler, went out on their boat — the Rainbow Warrior — to confront the vessel operated by the Playa Zahara in the South Fiji Basin.
Greenpeace rescued 14 fish caught on the boat’s line, including eight near-threatened blue sharks, four swordfish and an endangered longfin mako shark.
The group also removed 210 hooks and 20 kilometers of longline.
“It was devastating seeing these beautiful creatures being caught, often on their gills, in their mouth, by huge baited hooks,” Georgia Whitaker, a senior campaigner with Greenpeace Australia Pacific, told The Guardian.
“They were fighting for their lives, and then minutes later, you’d see blood spilling over the side of the boat.”
The crew of Playa Zahara, which caught more than 1.3 million pounds of blue shark in 2023 in the Pacific Southwest, told Greenpeace that the practice was, in fact, legal.
The group is also accusing Greenpeace of defamation, violating maritime laws, theft of their fishing supplies and posing risks to the crew of both ships involved.
“The species mentioned by Greenpeace are within the quotas and limits allowed by the competent authorities, and the capture, handling, and unloading procedures are controlled and documented, by all the systems established by the EU and Spanish authorities,” Patricia Rodríguez, a spokesperson for Viverdreams Fish, the company that owns Playa Zahara, said in a statement.
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