CALL FOR SATELLITE ACTION TO PROTECT MARINE SPECIES

Call for satellite action to protect marine species. Environmentalists and broadcasters Chris Packham, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and Amanda Holden have called on a UK satellite company to stop providing GPS data to fisheries that puts vulnerable ocean species at risk of extinction.

Seven senior lawmakers including Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Martyn Day MP have also signed a letter drawn up by more than 100 marine conservation groups, scientists, and global lawmakers calling on Iridium Satellite UK Ltd to stop profiting from the overfishing of tuna.

The letter points out that unsustainable industrial-scale tuna fishing in the Indian Ocean is being made possible by satellite companies that provide crucial GPS communications to European fishing companies.

Iridium Satellite UK Limited provides sales, marketing, and technical support to customers in regions surrounding the Indian Ocean where yellowfin tuna populations are crashing towards collapse.

It has supplied tens of thousands of GPS-tracked short-burst data devices that commercial fisheries use to monitor fish across vast swathes of ocean – allowing them to overfish juvenile yellowfish tuna and other threatened species.

The devices also cause widespread marine plastics litter and e-waste pollution when they break apart at sea and wash up on beaches and coral reefs or sink to the seabed.

The letter calls on Iridium to halt the provision of real-time tracking through its short-burst data services to the tuna fishing industry in the Indian Ocean.

Read the full press release: http://tinyurl.com/mr3mdrn7

Global Coalition support letter: https://finsattached.org/…/Iridium-Overfishing…