AFP/Stockholm

Greenpeace said yesterday it will press ahead with plans to sink nearly 180 boulders into cod fishing grounds off Sweden to impede bottom-trawling, despite criticism from the Swedish government.

From tomorrow, the global environmental group will drop the boulders - each weighing one to three tonnes - into two protected areas in the Kattegat sound that separates the Swedish and Danish mainlands.

“The actions foreseen by Greenpeace rest on confrontation and unilateralism, which risks threatening necessary cooperation,” the Swedish agriculture and fisheries minister Eskil Erlandsson wrote in the Dagens Nyheter newspaper. “My hope is that Greenpeace will renounce such action and that instead we solve problems together,” he said.

But Greenpeace spokesman Staffan Danielsson said the Swedish government was taking cod “hostage” by not looking at the wider implications of bottom trawling on the environment.

“The cod in the Kattegat is severely depleted, it’s in very bad shape, but there are other things in the oceans as well,” he said.

“We have marine biodiversity (at the seabed) such as reeds, sandbanks, seabirds, corals, algae forests” that need protection from bottom trawling, which critics say disturbs the sea bottom and harms the maritime environment.

The boulders are to be sunk in zones classified as Natura 2000 in the Lilla Middelgrund (179sq km) and Flauden (104sq km) areas.

Both sites lie about 20km from Varberg port, off Sweden’s southwest coast.

Natura 2000 is a network of sites around the European Union protected by EU directives aimed at protecting wildlife and their habitats.

Carrying out tomorrow’s mission will be two Greenpeace vessels - the Beluga II and the Fehn Coast - with about 30 people on board.

“This is a conversation measure in order to protect habitats, which is what governments are supposed to do,” Danielsson said.

A similar initiative was taken last year off Germany, and according to Greenepace it has proven effective in discouraging fishing.