Our friends in Greenpeace Holland have today painted the sides of three of Europe’s largest factory fishing vessels in the port of IJmuiden, identifying the amount of EU subsidies these ships have received - subsidies which enable them to plunder the waters of West Africa.
Three large-scale trawlers are now tagged in white paint which says 20 million, 24 million and 28 million euros – the amounts they have received in subsidies from the European taxpayer in the last five years. That money has gone towards fuel, access to West African waters, and in one case, modernisation. Our activists were cut short by the police before completing their fourth target. Meanwhile, our activists in Bremerhaven, Germany hung a banner on another heavily subsidised European vessel, with the message “No tax money for ocean destruction”.
The figure painted on the boats came from a research report by Profundo, which shows how these vessels are heavily dependent on subsidies in order to make a profit. The study identifies a money trail from the EU and its member countries to three Dutch companies and their international subsidiaries in the UK, France, Germany, Lithuania and Ireland. These companies are represented by the Pelagic Freezer-trawler Association (PFA). They own a fleet of 34 large-scale trawlers, symbolic of the overcapacity of the European fleet.
Europe’s most powerful factory fishing vessels, having already depleted stocks in European waters, now need to go further afield in the hunt for fish. It's shocking that these vessels use EU subsidies to gain access rights to the waters of some of the poorest countries like Morocco and Mauritania.
The PFA ships are literally floating fish factories, capable of catching, processing and freezing 300 tonnes of fish day. Fish go in and cardboard boxes come out. Check out this video to see for yourself – taken on-board one of the super trawlers our activists painted today.
This and other types of industrial scale fishing like bottom trawling are putting the food security of millions of West African people at risk. These communities rely on local fish stocks for protein, and particularly in the case of Mauritania’s drought-induced food crisis, need fish now more than ever. But it’s effectively the European taxpayer who is subsidising the large scale removal of fish from their seas – fish that never make it to their plates.
Over the coming few months, Greenpeace is going to be campaigning hard for European governments to work together to reign in the EU’s bloated fleet and not subsidise the export of overfishing to other regions. With the Common Fisheries Policy under reform, the EU must put an end to unsustainable factory fishing and instead support low impact, small-scale fisheries. Anything less and we are facing a future without fish.
