The Science Patagonian toothfish are not the only species being decimated by pirate fishing vessels. The science team on board the Arctic Sunrise documents the impact pirate fishing has on a wide array of bird species in the Southern Ocean. Campaign Report Track the progress of our campaign by checking out these periodic reports from Greenpeace's onboard campaign team. Get first hand accounts from our crew. In 1999 Greenpeace embarked on an expedition to expose pirate fishing in the Southern Ocean and caught the notorious, Spanish-owned pirate vessel Salvora illegally fishing in the French waters around Kerguelen Island.
Buoys mark the location of an abandoned pirate longline.
I had the 4 am to 8 am watch and for the third morning in a row we are accompanied by a black-browed albatross. The orange stripe across its breast indicates that it is part of someone's marking experiment. During my watch I saw a shooting star and also watched a satellite trace an ark across the night-sky. In addition to simply disabling this illegally set fishing line, we want to document the devastation that these longlines wreak on the marine environment. Tens of thousands of seabirds get hooked and drowned on pirate long lines each year.