This week, Greenpeace volunteers hung giant fabric ‘dead sharks’ on the front of a balcony on tuna giant Princes HQ building.
On the ground campaigners dressed in shark costumes handed out leaflets to Princes staff as they turned up for work, with the theme tune to the movie ‘Jaws’ is being blasted through a stereo system, which the campaigners locked inside a giant mock-up tuna tin near to the main entrance of the building.
Greenpeace says that this was to show “the consequences of the destructive, shark-killing fishing methods used to catch the tuna for their tins.”
Princes is the biggest tinned tuna company in the UK, selling more than a third of all tuna tins in the country. The food and drink company, owned by Mitsubishi, recently appeared at the bottom of the Greenpeace 2011 tinned tuna league table.
Head of Greenpeace oceans campaign, David Ritter, explained:
“Princes is the biggest tuna company in the country, responsible for more than one in three tuna tins sold in Britain. But killed alongside Princes tuna is almost the entire cast list of Finding Nemo, and this includes rare sharks as well as other important animals facing extinction in the wild.”
Ritter continued:
“That’s why Princes came bottom of a recent Greenpeace league table of tinned tuna companies and that’s why there are dead sharks hanging from their offices this morning. Princes need to stop selling tuna caught using such reckless fishing methods, and retailers should stop stocking Princes tuna tins until they do.”
By the day of the protest (Monday), more than 75,000 people had already emailed Princes executives to tell them to stop selling tinned tuna caught using the destructive fishing method known as ‘Purse Seining with Fads.’
This fishing method involves using devices that attract in, and then scoop up, thousands of sharks, as well as many rays, turtles and sometimes even dolphins, along with all the tuna. On average, every time this method is used, 1kg of these other species will be caught for every 9kg of tuna, says Greenpeace.
Earlier this year Princes were caught selling Bigeye tuna - a red-listed species the IUCN describes as at risk of extinction - for less than a pound a tin.
Additionally, just last month Princes admitted it needs to change its labelling after Greenpeace lodged an official complaint with the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) accusing the company of misleading their customers with false environmental claims.
