(ABOARD THE ARCTIC SUNRISE) - The Teseo, an Italian tug loaded with 10 tonnes of live bluefin tuna, welcomes Greenpeace activists on board with no hesitation.

The fish were caught by Libyans, and "we're taking it to a ranch in Tunisia," said captain Michele Trinca.

Far from the oversight of the European Union, the Libyan company has been free to continue catching the critically endangered fish.

The EU halted bluefin tuna fishing on June 16 saying its quotas were already filled, though the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) has set June 30 as the outside deadline for fleets to continue catching the critically endangered fish to meet their quotas.

But industry sources say quota controls tend to be looser in countries outside the European Union.

The Teseo crew showed reporters and Greenpeace activists their documents and records, stating that the fish was caught by the Libyan vessel Al Safa III using seine nets -- which are legal -- between June 25 and 27 in Libyan waters.

The same ship in previous years flew an Italian flag and was called the Aurora, according to ICCAT records.

"What we are seeing is a critically over-capacity fleet simply changing their names and their flags. For the tuna, this gives no respite at all," said Karli Thomas of Greenpeace.

Al Safa III's catch will be fattened at a ranch in Mahdia, Tunisia, before being sold on to Japanese buyers at mouth-watering prices, eventually to be served at elegant sushi restaurants.

The Arctic Sunrise embarked on a three-month east-west tour called "Defending Our Mediterranean" in May, starting off Turkey. The aim was "tackling threats to the sea and promoting marine reserves to protect the health and productivity of the Mediterranean," Greenpeace said on its website.

As part of the tour, it commissioned a helicopter -- flown by a retired Dutch navy pilot who flies missions for Greenpeace from time to time, Marnix Van Boetzelaer -- that took up a reporter and a cameraman to look for EU vessels fishing illegally or supplying tuna ranches along the Tunisian coast.

Aboard the Arctic Sunrise, campaign coordinator Dave Roberts told AFP: "The Mediterranean is a classic example of all you can find in terms of destruction of the seas: raping the sea of its fish, destruction of the coast by fast-growing tourism, toxic waste ..."

The Greenpeace boat is an old Norwegian vessel -- ironically, a former sealer -- now painted in rainbow colours, backed by a helicopter and an ocean probe that can go down 200 metres (650 feet), as well as plankton samplers.

Soon after the start of the operation, a Turkish tuna vessel purposely collided with the Arctic Sunrise before crew members began hurling lead fishing weights at the Greenpeace ship, the group reported.

Then in Italy, Greenpeace activists seized illegal driftnets from an Italian fishing vessel, the Diomede II, that was some 35 kilometres outside its authorised fishing zone.

The Arctic Sunrise followed the ship home to its harbour in Sicily, where it was being met by the coastguard after Greenpeace asked for the driftnets still on board to be confiscated.

Driftnets, known as "walls of death," catch everything in their path and have long been banned by the EU, the United Nations and other international bodies.

The cost of the Greenpeace operation including fuel, crew, maintenance and supplies is 5,780 euros a day, or 693,600 euros (one million dollars) for the whole campaign, and another 200 euros per hour of flight in the helicopter.

The budget is a far cry from the early days of the group, when "it was just a bunch of hippies going to Iceland to protect the whales," said Arctic Sunrise captain Pete Bouquet, who was also the first captain of the Greenpeace's legendary Rainbow Warrior vessel, sunk by the French secret service in 1986.

Ironically, Greenpeace really took off financially after that episode, he noted.

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