Animal Activists Are Trying to Save the World's Fish from the Mafia
By Alex Chitty
On a warm night in July 2012, off the island of Ugljan in the Croatian Adriatic, two activists slipped into the water near a line of huge fish farms. Security boats patrolled the perimeter of the vast circular nets, as guards stationed on a nearby hill kept watch through the night. And for good reason: the thousands of bluefin tuna in the farms, destined for the tables of Japanese sushi restaurants, are worth millions. Individual fish routinely sell for more than $1,500 at wholesale markets in Tokyo and closer to home. The Croatian tuna had been caught as juveniles under a loophole in international law, and were being “fattened up” before heading to market.
Wearing tactical diving gear, the divers arrived at the first net, slicing three-quarters of its length and sending bluefin streaming out. The divers swam to another net, repeating the process, and then headed home. The security teams circling above were none the wiser until the following day. The activists, from a group known as the Black Fish, were long gone. The raid was similar to a previous attack in September 2010, when Black Fish divers freed dolphins from holding pens near Taiji, Japan.
Since the action in Japan and Croatia, the group has turned its sights on drift nets—long, fine nets suspended from buoys, typically across fish migration paths. Banned in international waters since 1992, the longest nets, which can stretch 50 miles behind industrial-sized fishing vessels, are associated with almost indiscriminate killing of marine life. Their mesh size can be as little as ten centimeters, meaning young fish are caught before they can reproduce. Sea turtles, dolphins, and sharks also fall prey, and since they’re illegal to catch, they’re returned, often mortally wounded, to the ocean.
In spite of the ban put in place at the urging of the UN, the practice continues. From the Indian Ocean to the North Pacific, illegal drift nets are still in use, and no proper authority exists to monitor their use or bring prosecutions. In the Mediterranean, their use is often controlled by various mobs, according to the Black Fish’s founder Wietse van der Werf: “Organized crime and corruption is a big part of why drift netting carries on in the Mediterranean. The Calabrian Mafia is known to run the biggest operation in Europe, right alongside the biggest cocaine-running operation—they’re pretty much one and the same.”
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