Environmental group Greenpeace has been working enough to prevent bottom trawling which is not god for bottom marine lives. Its activists dumped the first of about 150 three-tonne granite slabs into the North Sea off Germany, an effort meant to deter bottom trawling and protect a reef. A group of activists set sail from Hamburg for the Sylt Outer Reef with three ships and several inflatable rafts about 65km off the coast.
Thilo Maack, a spokesman for the group told that fishermen won’t be very happy to have a three-tonne stone in their nets. It is also said that the reef is a European Union-designated conservation area but also used for commercial fishing by boats that use nets to trawl the sea floor. Greenpeace Germany member Iris Menn said that this has resulted in the destruction of numerous fish and other species. According to Menn the boulders – each about a cubic metre in size – were being tossed overboard in a bid to obstruct the nets used for bottom trawling and to make it harder for sand and gravel to be extracted from the sea floor.
Menn informed that they managed to drop about 40 adding that strong wind and bad weather had forced the Noortland and the other ships and rafts to return to port. She said they planned to head back out again this week to drop the rest of the rocks. But the German Environment Ministry said that it takes nature protection very seriously.
