The University of Tasmania's reported condemnation of Sea Shepherd Australia's removal of illegal fishnets from the Southern Ocean is "counter-productive academic hogwash", environmentalist Bob Brown said today.

"With most of the world's wild fisheries collapsing, this carping criticism of the only people taking high-seas action against the Patagonian toothfish poachers will damage the University of Tasmania's remnant international reputation as a centre of environmental wisdom", Brown said.

"Compounding the university's learned negativity is the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources executive secretary's reported opinion that hauling the pirate toothfishers' abandoned nets or lines out of the Southern Ocean is fishing and therefore unauthorised. "This fails the primary school common sense test. Citizens are left to assume CAMLR wants the deadly nets left drifting through the ocean", Brown said.

"Instead of backing Sea Shepherd Australia's ocean-saving ships Bob Barker and Sam Simon in their life-saving work these negative nerds are head-banging their desks while the villains flee back to Africa. Taxpayers have every right to expect the experts would be earning their pay better than this, even in the Silly Season", he said. "All the more so when the fishing industry's Coalition of Legal Toothfish Operators has praised Sea  Shepherd's work."

Bob Brown