One of the world's biggest fishing trawlers - dragging a monster net that kills dolphins, seals and sea birds while gathering its target species - is on its way to Australia to trawl for some of the most critical species in our fragile marine ecosystem. The FV Margiris super trawler is twice of size of any boat that has ever fished in Australian waters and has a history of over-fishing off the coast of West Africa.
GetUp member Rebecca Hubbard started a petition on CommunityRun.org - a new GetUp initiative aimed at giving people the tools they need to start, run and deliver campaigns of interest to them and their communities. She has just returned from Canberra where she met with politicians on the issue, and presented them with a petition that has already been signed by more than 35,000 people.
Now is where you come in. Can you give Rebecca's campaign a boost in the hours before this important decision is made?
http://www.communityrun.org/p/stopthesupertrawler
A decision on the super trawler will be made in a matter of days. Rebecca and the Stop the Trawler alliance delivered the signatures gathered so far in a large net with each name printed on a paper fish to the Minister of Fisheries, Joe Ludwig. If Australia is to prevent the super trawler from entering and overfishing our waters, the campaign needs a huge public splash at this critical moment.
Will you help push this great campaign over the line by giving the petition a huge surge in numbers ahead of the decision? Add your name to Rebecca's CommunityRun petition here:
http://www.communityrun.org/p/stopthesupertrawler
Thanks for getting on board,
The GetUp team.
PS - Rebecca's petition is not your typical GetUp petition because we didn't start it - she did. She began her campaign on GetUp's new tool, CommunityRun.org, built to allow all Australians to start their own campaigns, on the issues that matter to them. CommunityRun is new - so we're still tweaking things - but you can check it out now at http://www.communityrun.org/
