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Image: Ocean Rebellion / FIS
Ocean Rebellion ask the public to just stop buying John West Tuna
UNITED KINGDOM
Thursday, May 23, 2024, 07:00 (GMT + 9)
At 8:30 on Tuesday, 21 May, a giant John West tuna can containing bloodied merpeople ‘bycatch’ was torn open in front of the Blue Food Innovation Summit, Hilton Hotel, Great Suffolk Street, London. All around the can lay evidence of the drifting Fish Aggregating Devices (dFADs) which had ensnared the poor merfolk before they were cruelly canned by John West.
Source: Ocean Rebellion
The giant can was labelled ‘JOHN WEST, TUNA CHUMPS’ and members of the John West Ltd team, dressed in suits, cheerfully watched the distressed merfolk as they munched their ‘John West lunch on the go’ Tuna Pasta Salads, waiting for their boss, Thai Union’s ‘Sustainability’ Director Europe, Chris Shearlock, to begin his speech at the summit at 9:50am. We expect that Chris won’t reveal to his audience how Thai Union (owner of John West) has made multiple empty promises to stop sourcing tuna from Spanish and French fisheries who use controversial drifting Fish Aggregating Devices (dFADs) in the Indian Ocean.
"Unfortunately the ugly cruelty of the industrial tuna fishing industry will be missing from the agenda of today’s Blue Food Innovation Summit. Instead the focus is on spinning industrial fishing's bluewash (ocean related greenwash) and ignoring the destruction of marine biodiversity, aided by the complicity of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), TESCO and the numerous speakers at Summit.".
Source: Ocean Rebellion
This action by Ocean Rebellion also coincides with another significant tuna industry bluewashing event, the annual INFOFISH conference being held in Bangkok, Thailand, from 20-22 May 2024. INFOFISH is the meetup of the greedy owners of the global tuna industry, who meet to plan and scheme their annual carve up of the world’s last tuna populations, often with the help of AI, drones and other high tech slaughtering technology.
Back in London, however, the scene outside the Blue Food Innovation Summit is the latest in a series of interventions by Ocean Rebellion highlighting the use of dFADs by the Spanish and French tuna Industry, the chief suppliers of dodgy tuna to Thai Union. The merpeople represent the millions of tonnes of ‘unintentionally’ caught marine life ensnared by dFADs every year. This marine life is called ‘bycatch’, but really it should be called what it actually is, which is whales, dolphins, sharks and turtles – and that’s the short list.
Thai Union is the world’s largest tuna processing company and made a whopping profit of £124 million pounds (USD 157.69 M) in the first quarter of 2024, a profit surge at the expense of crashing populations of sharks, turtles, cetaceans and juvenile yellowfin tuna in the Indian Ocean.
 Ocean Rebellion’s Rob Higgs said: “Conspiring with Thai Union to overfish yellowfin and bigeye tuna, Iceland, Tesco, Morrisons, Lidl and Aldi are helping drive these amazing species to extinction, together with all the whales, dolphins, sharks and turtles trapped and killed in their suppliers’ nets and dumped back dead into the Indian Ocean. That’s why I would never buyer John West tuna.”
Source: Ocean Rebellion
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