A UK satellite company has been urged to stop providing GPS data to fisheries that puts vulnerable ocean species at risk.
In a letter, more than 100 marine conservation groups, scientists and global lawmakers have called on Iridium Satellite UK Ltd to stop profiting from the overfishing of tuna. Seven senior lawmakers, including Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Martyn Day MP, have also signed the communication, with environmentalists and broadcasters Chris Packham, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Amanda Holden also joining the campaign.
The coalition’s letter states that unsustainable industrial-scale tuna fishing in the Indian Ocean is being made possible by satellite companies that provide crucial GPS communications to European fishing companies.
It notes that Iridium provides sales, marketing, and technical support to customers in regions surrounding the Indian Ocean where yellowfin tuna populations are crashing towards collapse. Also that it has supplied “tens of thousands of GPS-tracked short-burst data devices that commercial fisheries use to monitor fish across vast swathes of ocean – allowing them to overfish juvenile yellowfish tuna and other threatened species”.
The letter calls on Iridium to halt the provision of real-time tracking through its short-burst data services to the tuna fishing industry in the Indian Ocean.
Packham, a wildlife TV presenter, conservationist and campaigner, said: “There is something both sad and sinister about the invention and deployment of these dystopian devices. Sad because they seriously exacerbate the rate of decline of increasingly rare fish populations, and sinister because they drift unseen in distant seas on the pretext of offering shelter and respite to marine life. In fact, they are insidious traps set by a greedy unsustainable industry hell bent on maximising profits over any protection of these ecosystems. Bobbing out there, the quiet slop of waves on the buoy, adrift in a vast blue ocean but connected by a clever but dangerous burst of technology which sets in place a slaughter. It’s all very Skynet, in both the Sci-Fi and real sense. And ironic that it’s facilitated by a company that prides itself on saving and protecting lives. Iridium doesn’t need this, the oceans don’t need this, and tuna, sharks, dolphins and turtles don’t need it either.”
Broadcaster and Campaigner Fearnley-Whittingstall said he was shocked to learn that Iridium, via its low-earth-orbit satellite network, is supporting unsustainable commercial fishing activities in the Indian Ocean, with its data leading to the “decimation of endangered shark, turtle, whale and dolphin populations”.
He said “Iridium’s electronic devices should not be in the ocean in the first place as they are contributing to toxic electronic waste and plastics pollution which devastates thousands of miles of coral reefs, seagrass meadows and beaches along the Indian Ocean coastline. Furthermore, these industrial fishing operations are stealing fish from impoverished African communities, so Iridium is complicit in that too. Please, Iridium, just abide by your own commendable environmental commitments as posted on your website, rather than making a completely hypocritical mockery of your professed concern for the future of our oceans.”
Day, who is the Scottish National Party MP for Linlithgow and East Falkirk, said Iridium has been found to be acting irresponsibly and of being an enabler of unsustainable overfishing and dirty plastics pollution in the Indian Ocean, despite the high-minded environmental claims on its website.
“What is also shockingly apparent is that low-orbit space is a lawless free-for-all zone where anything goes, and where satellite companies can shirk their corporate, environmental, and social responsibilities,” he said, adding that the UK government should step in to regulate Iridium’s unsustainable actions.
Marine Conservation Professor Callum Roberts of the University of Exeter’s Centre for Ecology and Conservation remarked that: “In only a few decades, the use of satellite tracked fish aggregating devices has massively accelerated the plunder of open ocean fish, inflicting immense collateral damage on wildlife and habitats. If comparable destructive exploitation was happening on land, in plain sight, there would be an immediate clamour for the practice to be banned.”
Alex Hofford, marine wildlife campaigner with UK charity Shark Guardian, described Iridium’s behaviour in the Indian Ocean as “an affront to decency”.
He said: “They have turned a blind eye to unsustainable overfishing for too long, reaping vast profits as fragile ecosystems are destroyed and endangered shark, ray, turtle and cetacean populations are decimated by European tuna boats that rely on their satellite data services for their plunder.”
The letter, sent on 26 January 2024, contrasts progressive environmental and corporate social responsibility (CSR) statements on Iridium’s website with the reality of its partnership with harmful industrial fishing companies.
