Giant mobile posters displaying famous celebrities in the nude holding dead fish have been wandering around Berlin’s city center this week as part of the international Fishlove, #EndOverfishing campaign seeking to protect the oceans from overfishing throughout the European Union.
Berlin’s mobile exhibition to promote sustainable fishing shows well-known film personalities in the nude, including Luxembourg’s Vicky Krieps and Germany’s Nina Hoss and Tom Wlaschiha and is part of a global campaign by the Our Fish organization, dedicated to achieve sustainable fish stocks in European waters.
The campaign has also been launched in other E.U. countries and the United States.
Stars such as Sean Penn, Elizabeth McGovern (from Downton Abbey), Cressida Bonas (Prince Harry’s former girlfriend), and Michael Jackson’s daughter, Paris, shed their clothes to be snapped with a mackerel, an opah or a shark for the Fishlove naked protest.
“Celebrities and actors pose with fish in a courageous call on E.U. governments for bold action to #EndOverfishing in Europe’s waters by 2020,” reads the main message of the campaign.
The series features actors from Hollywood, London, Germany and Copenhagen, with more European stars set to join by the end of the year.
Past years have seen Judi Dench, Helena Bonham Carter, Fiona Shaw, Zoe Wanamaker, Emma Thompson and Gillian Anderson starring naked with fish for the ongoing campaign.
The parade of movie stars and celebrities posing without their clothes with commercially-fished-and- threatened species were shot by famous photographers like Alan Gelati and Olaf Blecker for the celebrated Fishlove campaign organized by the British restaurant MOSHIMO Brighton, in a major effort coordinated by the Our Fish organization to urge European governments to end overfishing by 2020.
The German exhibit was also scheduled to coincide with the E.U.’s Agriculture and Fisheries Council meeting this week in Luxembourg, where fisheries ministers negotiated catch quotas for the Baltic Sea for 2019.
More than 90 species of fish in European waters could become extinct according to the National Union for the Conservation of Nature. Sharks, rays and other cartilaginous are at the most risk, with more than 40% of them facing extinction.
Environmentalists were disappointed with the quotas established during the AGRIFISH meeting in Luxembourg, and Our Fish condemned the decisions: “The E.U. fisheries ministers once again set Baltic fishing limits at unsustainable levels,” reads their statement.
“Both the E.U. Commission and E.U. fisheries ministers have failed the citizens, fisheries and coastal communities of the Baltic Sea region by rubber stamping the continued overfishing of iconic and chronically unhealthy fish stocks,” said Our Fish Programe Director Rebecca Hubbard.
According to the organization, the E.U. Commission’s proposal has set fishing limits for many Baltic stocks at unsustainable levels for eastern Baltic cod, western herring, central herring and salmon which are above scientific recommendations.
“Despite strong support from celebrities, scientists and the public for ending overfishing in E.U. waters, Baltic member states have instead let short-term profits and political interests drive the setting of unsustainable fishing limits.”
