Greenpeace: Tuna app

I love Greenpeace! They have done it again: Greenpeace have found another inventive way to help us to make the right choice. Because we all want to do this for our planet. And as well as making the right choice, we want convenience and knowledge, right at our fingertips. They have bought out a new ‘Tuna App’ where you download it (it’s free), installing it on your iPhone, enabling you to type in a brand of tuna (assuming you’re in the supermarket and not at your mum’s house, checking out her pantry) and make the right choice when purchasing voting with your dollars!

This app sits inside the Australian Marine Conservation Societies popular Sustainable Seafood Guide app; this way shoppers can make ocean friendly choices while shopping for canned and fresh fish in the supermarket. You can find out if a brand uses sustainable fishing methods and whether they care about the long-term protection of tuna.

“Canned tuna is the most commonly bought seafood product here in Australia” said Greenpeace Australia Pacific’s Oceans Campaigner Nathaniel Pelle. “But the overwhelming majority of it comes from companies that allow the use of destructive fishing methods. Most shoppers want a sustainable product and they don’t want to have to do a lot of research to find it. That’s where the Canned Tuna Guide app can help.”

“Despite more sustainable pole and line options being available than ever before – in just about every supermarket – shelves are still packed with tuna that’s either at-risk or caught using a destructive fishing method that’s wiping out vulnerable marine life.” [1]

In this YouTube clip, a helicopter pilot blows the whistle via footage he handed over to Greenpeace. He took this while he was filming his holiday adventures in the gorgeous pacific. We can see exactly how this unsustainable fishing practice pans out for the tuna, turtles and sharks of the Pacific Ocean.

As an example of a brand of tuna not to buy (as yet) is Woolworths home brand and Woolworths select, as they don’t use sustainable fishing practices… and they, at this point in time, offer the consumer no evidence saying they have stopped the awful fishing method of using purse seine nets with fish aggregation devices (FADs) for catching tuna. Sadly, this method also catches turtles and sharks within the nets. BAD Woolies!

You can read more about the app here and you can download the tuna app here

How else can you help? Follow these links where Greenpeace are running campaigns in the following countries:

Australia: While every major player in the UK tuna industry has improved how it sources tuna, the Australian industry drags the chain. If you’d like to help change this, you can add your name to this letter, to help stop unsustainable fishing practices, and the use of fish aggregation devices (FADs).

USA: Click here to ask tuna brand Chicken of the Sea to clean up their policy.

New Zealand: Click here to send a message to Sealord, New Zealand’s largest canned tuna brand, urging them to stop buying tuna from companies destroying ocean life in the Pacific.

And Canada: you can click here

Cheers

Miche 🙂

[1] http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/the-video-the-tuna-industry-doesnt-want-you-t/blog/37882/

(Greenpeace Banner: Trademark of Stichting Greenpeace Council)