Almudena Fernández and Aritz Aranburu join the Oceana #StopOverfishing campaign
Press Release Date: March 23, 2017
Location: Madrid, Spain
Contact:
Anna Baxter | email: abaxter@oceana.org
Anna Baxter
Madrid — Top model Almudena Fernández and surfer Aritz Aranburu today announced their support for Oceana’s #StopOverfishing campaign, which aims to raise awareness about the problem of overfishing and ensure that European ministers take urgent action against it. In European waters, two-thirds of fish stocks are overfished. This means that more fish are caught than can reproduce, and that fishery resources are therefore progressively declining.
“We don’t realise that we are emptying the sea because the fishmongers are always well stocked, but much of the fish comes from ever more distant and deeper waters. We are altering the marine ecosystems and we have to stop before it’s too late. I don’t want a future in which children have to surf in oceans devoid of life,” explains Almudena.
“The ocean is my home. I worry about what’s happening to it,” adds Aritz. “I’ve travelled all over the world catching waves and I want to give back to the sea what it has given me: an enormously rich life. The ocean is our natural heritage: we must take care of it.”
Overfishing is one of the greatest threats to the oceans, but also one of the least known. About half of the Atlantic fish stocks are in this predicament, a figure that is as high as 96% in European waters in the Mediterranean. However, a recent Oceana survey found that 8 out of 10 respondents either did not know or underestimated the extent of this problem in Europe.
For this reason, Oceana will be disseminating information about overfishing in the coming months. Using the hashtag #StopOverfishing on Twitter or Instagram or leaving a message on the StopOverfishing.eu website, anyone can add a fish to a “virtual ocean” and thus show their support for the campaign. The fish will appear on the website along with the messages from the users.
The international marine conservation organisation would like to thank Almudena Fernández and Aritz Aranburu for their unselfish support in publicising this project. Almudena has been collaborating with Oceana since 2010, when she participated in an expedition to the Gulf of Mexico to document the effects of the spill from the Deepwater Horizon platform. In 2016, Almudena and Aritz joined the first Oceana expedition in the North Sea, where they recorded a video to support this campaign against overfishing.
Add your fish in StopOverfishing.eu
Photos and video: http://bit.ly/StopOverfishingAlmudena
#StopOverfishing