Green group to launch Med tuna Blue Rage campaign

Conservation Society Sea Shepherd today is launching a Blue Rage campaign against the poaching of threatened bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean, the director of its French branch said.

The group's boat Steve Irwin arrived on Saturday in Malta, near where Greenpeace activists clashed on Friday with French commercial tuna fishing vessels, director Lamya Essemlali said.

She and the group's founder, Paul Watson, are to join the vessel and its crew of about 40 people today to launch the campaign which would last until mid-July, she said.

"We want to stop the poachers," Ms Essemlali said, adding that Sea Shepherd's boat would consider sailing into Libyan waters, where many poachers operate, to protect the bluefin.

The legal fishing period for the fish is May 15 to June 15, but even during that period the catch is capped by strict international quotas.

Sea Shepherd says on the website www.seashepherd.org/blue-rage the Steve Irwin and its crew "will stand against the illegal overfishing of bluefin tuna."

"We will do everything possible within the boundaries of international law to protect the magnificent bluefin," it says.

Fishermen on Friday hurled a grappling hook at a Greenpeace dinghy trying to free endangered bluefin tuna from their nets off Malta, injuring an activist whose leg was pierced by the hook.

Ms Essemlali said that Greenpeace had been right to target a ship that was fishing legally because, whether legal or not, "it's all endangering stocks of the fish."

"Targets are different before June 15, when illegal fishing is difficult to spot, and afterwards," Essemlali added.