As per the press information Greenpeace vessel with all the activists have been stopped by a Maltese military vessel using water cannons to prevent the activists from a ramming into a large pen holding bluefin tuna. A military spokesman informed that the Greenpeace activists wanted to damage the pen so that they could protect bluefin tuna, a prize species, from hunting.
On the contrary the Greenpeace said that its activists in seven inflatable boats met “a great deal of resistance” when they tried to free the endangered bluefin tuna from the cage. The pen, located around 25 nautical miles off the coast of Malta, is bound for a commercial fishing farm. The environment group said that it had stationed two ships in the Mediterranean, the Rainbow Warrior and Arctic Sunrise, to confront tuna fishing boats during the short tuna fishing season, which the European Union brought to an early close on June 9.
Earlier this an incident took place where a Greenpeace activist trying to free tuna from a commercial fishing net off Malta was harpooned through the leg by French fishermen at the beginning of the month. Greenpeace said that the industrial fishing of bluefin tuna caused the stocks to plunge by up to 80 percent in the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic. EU and USA has supported the international ban on tuna fishing but Japan lobbied successfully and the proposal was defeated.
