Greenpeace Foundation first began calling for a banning of the technology in 1981, based on reports of carnage in the Bering Sea salmon fishery, then conducted by Japan in U.S. waters.

In 1982, Don White (then president of Greenpeace Foundation) secured an agreement from Sakutaro Fujiya, head of Japan’s Salmon Fisheries Cooperative, to meet in Japan to discuss ways to ameliorate the high kills of seabirds and dall’s porpoise in the Bering Sea fishery. Two days before White’s plane was to leave for Japan, Fujiya called off the meeting and broke off talks.

In response, White planned an expedition to document the Bering Sea kill and create an internationally-televised documentary on the destructiveness of driftnets. Securing primary funding from Ted Turner, Greenpeace Foundation chartered the vessel Rainbow Warrior (from Greenpeace International) and jointly crewed it for the expedition. (Interestingly, to secure Turner’s funding to get the RW to the Bering Sea White also had to create a campaign to invade the Soviet whaling station in Siberia, since Turner found driftnets to be a dull issue and insisted on a package deal. Thus, the highest-profile anti-whaling campaign of the ’80’s, the RW’s invasion of Siberia by GPINTL, was created by White as a way to secure documentation for the less-glamorous driftnet issue!)

In the summer of 1983, the campaign encountered the Japanese driftnet vessel Yahiko Maru in U.S. waters of the Bering sea, and documented the kill of Dall’s porpoise and seabirds. The crew then deployed zodiacs and gave chase to prevent the setting of the Yahiko Maru’s nets. For the first time in history, human intervention stopped a driftnet from being deployed. As an inherently destructive technology, this is the only way to prevent a massive bycatch: don’t let them go into the water in the first place.

WTBS, under contract with and oversight from Greenpeace Foundation, subsequently produced the internationally-aired special “From No Man’s Land a Porpoise Cries”, the first documentary of driftnet destruction and a wake-up call to people and fisheries of the world. By 1984, Japan was denied entry into U.S. waters of the Bering Sea.

In 1986, Greenpeace Foundation provided excerpts of these exclusive images to Greenpeace International campaigner Alan Reichman, who used them to convince Australia to ban Taiwanese driftnet fleets from its EEZ.

The end of deep-sea driftnetting had to wait until 1988 for its final catalyst. The organization Earthtrust conducted the definitive voyage to document the world’s largest and most destructive fishery, and to consolidate those images, and that data, over the next three years into a global moratorium. The Coordinator of that international effort was Sue White, now the President of Greenpeace Foundation.