Respond's Greek team supports legal action against dolphin and marine life abuse
Following up on the Greek team’s activities, we are glad to announce our partnership with Sea Shepherd Greece since the beginning of May.
Sea Shepherd is an international, non-profit marine conservation organisation that engages in campaigns to defend wildlife and conserve and protect the world’s oceans from illegal exploitation and environmental destruction. They use direct action to defend marine life on the high seas and works with national authorities to tackle illegal fishing in sovereign waters. They currently have 13 ships that take action around 5 countries in Africa.
The Greek team of Sea Shepherd have been active in underwater clean-ups and have offered extensive training material in primary schools in Greece, describing their actions, so that children learn about the importance of the oceans and how we can best protect them. Its goal is to start performing actions in the Mediterranean Sea against illegal fishing, as well as patrolling for saving the Monachus monachus seal. A ship called Sea Eagle has already been bought and is currently located in Italy. Sea Shepherd Greece will be performing its first actions in cooperation with the Italian team.
First, we have assisted them in the translation of a lawsuit against Attica Park in Athens. They have filed a complaint to the Ministry of Environment about the illegal circus-style dolphin shows in Attica Park in 2013. The inspection report was forwarded to the prosecutor’s office and the trial took place in 2020. However Attica Park was not found guilty. Then, they were sued again and this time Attica’s Park dolphinarium license was revoked on February of 2020. This didn’t last long though, since Attica Region revoked their previous decision and allowed Attica Park to reopen the dolphinarium in July 2020. The next trial was canceled due to COVID and will probably take place in November 2021.
We currently support Sea Shepherd with the subtitling of their videos from English to Greek. The videos are to be uploaded to the Greek channel of Sea Shepherd on Youtube and describe the Operation Albacore in Africa. This is surely an exciting project for Respond, since subtitling is new for our team. Our translators rushed to offer their help and assist our partner in the best way possible.
If there’s one thing this partnership taught us, it is that we should all take a step back and think about humanity’s effects on the marine life. There is really not such thing as sustainable fishery any more. What we can do is stop - or cut down on fish consumption. As our partners from Sea Shepherd say - “The earth will die when the oceans will empty of fish”. So, let’s turn things around!
