The International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) is tapping the social networking Web site Twitter to raise awareness of tuna overfishing.
In conjunction with World Oceans Day on Monday, the ISSF is urging its Twitter followers to retweet, or forward, its message about tuna overfishing, which can be found at Twitter.com/ISSF. Launched on Monday, the viral campaign is called "Retweet (RT) for Our Oceans."
"Social networking sites are fast becoming the go-to source for people concerned about conservation and sustainability," said ISSF President Susan Jackson. "Passing out pamphlets would take away from the message. This is an environmentally conscious way to raise awareness."
The ISSF is calling on the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), which is holding its annual meeting in La Jolla, Calif., beginning Monday, to heed the advice of its scientific staff and adopt conservation measures for threatened tuna stocks in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
The IATTC scientific staff has recommended a 12-week closure of the entire purse-seine EPO tuna fishery, a second 12-week closure for a limited area and restricting bigeye tuna longlining for several years.
"Last year, the United Nations made a statement when leaders designated June 8 World Oceans Day," said Jackson. "This year we're making a statement by embracing the message and sending it out on a platform people access for information every day."
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June 7, 2009
