Less than a week after targeting Canada’s No. 1 canned-tuna brand, Greenpeace is ramping up its campaign in New Zealand, this time calling out Sealord, one of the country’s largest seafood suppliers, for sourcing tuna caught on a longline or in a purse seine using fish aggregating devices (FADs).
The environmental activist organization took its anti-FAD message to the streets of downtown Auckland on Wednesday. Greenpeace volunteers dressed in shark costumes held sings that read, “Sealord, Change Your Tuna.” They also handed out information and asked passersby to sign a petition.
“As Sealord is so caught up with its own image, we’re helping it with its rebranding. We’ve changed its slogan from ‘The Seafood Experts’ to the ‘The Seafood Exploiters,’ which is a far more accurate description, a Greenpeace campaigner wrote on the organization’s New Zealand website.
In addition to Sealord, Greenpeace called out John West, Greenseas and the four private-label brands sold at New Zealand’s two major supermarket chains, Foodstuffs and Progressive Enterprises, in a campaign it launched in April. The group claims the brands are failing to source only fish harvested in a sustainable, environmentally friendly manner. Greenpeace claims that using FADs to harvest tuna results in high byctach rates of species like sharks and sea turtles.
Greenpeace has also targeted canned tuna brands in the United Kingdom and Canada. Last week, Greenpeace volunteers took to the streets of Montreal and Vancouver to protest Clover Leaf Seafoods.
