Greenpeace has sailed into a mini-storm of annoyed marine biologists after dropping massive granite boulders into the North Sea in an attempt to disrupt fishing.

Earlier this week its ship the Beluga II began dropping the first of 150 granite rocks weighing 2 to 3 tonnes onto the seabed. “By strategically placing granite rocks, Greenpeace intends to protect this ecologically diverse area from destructive practices including bottom trawling,” says the group (press release).

Unsurprisingly, fishermen were not happy. More surprisingly some marine biologists have joined them in condemning the group…

Conservationist Mark Powell, on the Blogfish blog, was first out of the blocks, and took issue the whole principle of ‘ecosabotage’.

I don’t like ecosabotage, it tends to polarize issues and turn off people who might otherwise support conservation. I doubt this action will be effective in stopping fishing, and if it does work it’s equivalent to taking the law into one’s own hands, which is a very slippery slope leading towards very bad things.

He also took issue with Greenpeace’s assurance – given to Reuters – that no damage had been done to the ecosystem:

I’ve done a lot of ocean bottom research, and I don’t believe that Greenpeace can be sure no harm was done. It’s impossible to map the ocean bottom so precisely and dump huge blocks so carefully as to avoid all damage. Even if nothing was crushed, this action replaces natural habitats with artificial habitats.

Miriam Goldstein, a grad student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, picked up on Powell’s point:

Invasive species looooove unoccupied artificial habitat. They often aren’t good enough competitors to invade an existing diverse community, but put down a nice blank granite slab and they’ll trash the place. Of couse, ripping up the ocean floor with a trawler ALSO creates a lot of vacant space for invasive species to come in (that may be one of the causes of the tunicate invasion on Georges Bank), but Greenpeace doesn’t have the right to make that judgement by itself.

One my favourite blogs – Deep Sea News – also weighed in, awarding Greenpeace the ‘Not Having the Faintest Idea of What They Are Doing Award’.

Hat tip: Deep Sea News.

UPDATE: Greenpeace have responded on Powell’s blog.

Image: “150 granite rocks are being placed on the Sylt Outer Reef in the German North Sea in order to put a stop to destructive bottom trawling” / © Greenpeace / Bente Stachowske