According to Greenpeace the activists have done this deliberately in front of the agriculture ministry building today in Paris in hopes of pressuring the French government to prevent over-fishing of bluefin tuna. Greenpeace told that the act was done at the time coincide with the start of the annual meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna in Marrakech, Morocco.
The conservation group said in a statement that footage from French television stations showed a pile of fish heads spilling from the sidewalk onto Rue Varenne and a banner over the ministry’s entrance calling for a moratorium on tuna fishing. It also said that the bluefin heads were dumped to demand closure of the east Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna’s fisheries.
It is pointed out that European tuna fishing boats, mainly from France, Italy and Spain, last year caught twice as much as the international commission’s “total allowable catch.” Japan, the largest importer of bluefin tuna, values the fish highly for sushi.
After the incident a Greenpeace delegation met with staff members of Michel Barnier, the agriculture and fisheries minister. The minister Barnier favors reducing the amount of tuna each boat can catch and imposing better controls.
