Suzanne Williams

It is a breath of fresh air to learn of Jono Ridler’s epic ocean swimming attempt to cover the length of the East Coast of the North Island (swim4theocean.org) in support of the fight against the offensive practice of bottom trawling.

This is a highly productive, but destructive and environmentally harmful (allowing sequestered carbon to escape into the atmosphere) method of fishing, which trawls huge, weighted cone-shaped nets over the seabed and seamount habitat of many diverse ecosystems living on the seafloor, destroying all in its path.  

Not only do any creatures still living find their homes destroyed, but no means remain of sustaining life in the desert left behind; except, of course, the ever-present plastic fragments.

Thank you, K S Steele, for your supportive Beacon letter.  

My tiny contribution is to forgo ordering two scallops with my fish’n chips.

Greenpeace has campaigned for many years on this issue with Government; calling for a total ban on trawling on the diverse, sensitive and essential coral sea-mounts.

Little has resulted, although a ban has recently been instituted of seafloor mining off Taranaki; a massive win for nature.

Our clean, green (ha-ha) country is the only one in the Southern Hemisphere still allowing this awful trawling practice.  

On top of the horrible Shane Jones’ “Goodbye, Freddie”, one more black mark for us Kiwis –  ‘Bye-bye, Nemo?