KILLER SATELLITES CONTROLLING BAD BUOYS

The Iridium satellite network is at the forefront of the destruction of fish throughout the Indian Ocean. The network is being used by Spain’s greedy industrial fishing fleet to aggregate fish beneath killer buoys. The net result, tonnes of bycatch (‘bycatch’ is the term used for ‘coincidently’ killing other marine life like turtles, sharks and dolphins) and the overfishing of tuna in an out of control scale.

These Spanish industrial fishing boats use ecologically destructive fishing gear in the Indian Ocean to overfish yellowfin tuna, whilst decimating shark, cetacean and turtle populations.

Spain’s unsustainable, harmful and indiscriminate fishing gear includes solar-powered satellite GPS location buoys – with Iridium transponders – which fishers attach to Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs) that drift hundreds of miles across the ocean attracting all kinds of marine life like a giant magnet.

Iridium transponders in the buoys ping the location of the overfished tuna through their satellite network to fishing boats. This makes Iridium complicit in ecocide and the unsustainable and out-of-control biodiversity destruction of our ocean.

That’s because the Spanish fishing industry is secretly killing at least 100,000 juvenile silky sharks in the Indian Ocean each year in their crazy, profit-driven pursuit of tuna for processing into supermarket canned tuna, particularly the tuna sold by popular UK brand John West and Tescos home brand.

And Iridium is helping them do it!

In addition to giving away the location of large schools of fish and sharks, Iridium satellite beacons also contain toxic plastics and e-waste such as:

– printed circuit boards containing persistent organic pollutants (POP)
– dioxins and heavy metals like cadmium
– Nickel MH and alkaline batteries
– eventual microplastics and nanoplastics.

Over time, Iridium enabled satellite buoys are destroyed by a combination of sun, sea and wave action, or they become abandoned, lost or discarded by the Spanish fishing boats.

As the Iridium enabled satellite buoys break apart and sink, poisonous marine pollution leaks into the sea, down to the seabed, and on to pristine coral reefs and beaches – all of which is illegal under international law.

Also, the polypropylene ropes and ghost nets that Iridium buoys are tethered to entangle vast quantities of marine wildlife such as sharks, whales and turtles.

That’s why we are calling on Iridium to immediately STOP cashing in on overfishing by pulling the plug on their dirty satellite services to the Spanish fishing industry, in particular these three dangerous and unsustainable satellite buoy manufacturers:

1) Zunibal

2) Marine Instruments

3) Satlink

Sign this petition today and contact the CEO of Iridium on twitter, Matt Desch: @IridiumBoss. Let Matt know why Iridium must end its relationship with industrial fishing today.