Are the Greenpeace calls to save Pacific Tuna stocks falling on deaf ears?

The Greenpeace campaigners are doing their best to get some action from the Pacific nations to stop the plunder of Pacific Tuna stocks by foreign fishing fleets from Europe or Asia before it is too late.
Greenpeace are again calling upon all Pacific governments to come together as one voice to reduce the allowed tuna catch by half and not allow themselves to be splintered by large fishing countries who go shopping around for a licence from Pacific countries if they have been turned down by another.
On this current visit on their ship, Esperanza, Greenpeace campaigners have almost completed a 3 month campaign to monitor (illegal) fishing activities in the Pacific and say they have witnessed many pirate activities by foreign fishing fleets.
Amongst their reports of illegal fishing activities was the Japanese vessel ‘caught red-handed’ while fishing illegally in Cook Islands waters in the Northern Group. They took photos of the illegal activities as well as establishing their exact GPS position which was then reported to Cook Islands Marine Resources. After a confirmation that the ship had no Cook Islands credentials, they were asked to forward their documentation to the local authorities to be used as ‘hard evidence’ against the captain and owners of the Japanese ship.
They have also witnessed the us of USA ‘flags of convenience’ to avoid fishing regulations, and rampant fishing activities in the areas bordered by Cook Islands, French Polynesia and Kiribati (in zone 3) by Taiwanese fishing fleets.
There are collectively many thousands of foreign fishing boats from Europe and Asia with say Taiwan alone having 1300 registered fishing ships countries and all now target Pacific waters because their own stocks have disappeared because of over fishing.
Other illegal activities included Taiwanese long-liners in the act of illegally transshipping (off-loading) their fish at sea to a refrigerated ‘mother ship’. This pirate practice is to hide the true extent of their catch from the authorities by not having to go ashore to any port to report their catch (for licensing purposes).
Greenpeace say this is ‘daylight robbery’ and that these ship are stealing our fish, cheating rules or wangling exemptions and have called upon all distant water fishing nations to support the efforts by Pacific countries to protect one of their most valuable natural resources – their tuna stocks.”
They are currently compiling a report of their recent findings to be submitted to the Tuna Commission which is the governing body of Pacific international waters.
However, there is a worrying trend where Pacific governments have not heeded the blunt warnings from Greenpeace which have been patrolling Pacific waters for the last 30 or so years.
“More alarming, is the disregard by governments of warnings coming from their own scientists to drastically reduce fishing effort in the region to stop the decline of fish stocks”. The oceans campaigners warn that the massive industrial foreign fishing fleets must be brought under control “before they fish the Pacific to death.”

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