Bycatch

It's only a couple of days since the Esperanza set out on the Defending Our Pacific Tour, but already the crew are deeply engaged in the fight to save Pacific tuna from decimation.

Tuna are the main target of industrial fishing fleets from Asia, USA and the EU. Between them they took over 2.5 million tonnes last year alone - a totally unsustainable amount. And the indiscriminate nature of their fishing methods means that thousands of sharks and turtles also die needlessly in their nets.

So I’m 'it' today, and in truth I'm behind with some blogging about the campaign anyway, so it’s about time I wrote something.

As the oceans' campaigner in the office I tend to get asked a lot of very different things in any one day – and quite frankly don't have time to deal with or consider every single oceansy thing that crosses my email box. Over 70 per cent of the planet = a lot of issues…  the issues that are variously piled up on my desk include marine reserves, whaling and over fishing.

And we can work on those with the public, our active supporters, colleagues in other countries and other groups, retailers, industry, politicians, journalists, artists, celebrities and any combination of the above. It's my job to basically do whatever it takes to make oceans campaigning happen – which can lead to very different 'typical days' in the office indeed.

Imagine an ocean without fish © endoftheline.com

So, what's the movie we're here at Sundance with about? Well, it's an adaptation of Charles Clover's brilliant book on overfishing, The End Of The Line, which is an evocative and shocking portrayal of what we have done and are doing to our oceans – just to put seafood on our plates.

Tinned tuna is big business - there's a can in almost everyone's cupboard. Here in the UK we can't get enough of it - we're the second biggest consumer in the world after the USA. Globally tuna exports are worth more than any other fish species, at around 2.7 billion dollars per year.

But there are big problems with the way tuna is caught. Our new briefing paper, Tinned Tuna's Hidden Catch, explains how large numbers of sea turtles, sharks and other fish are all being wiped out by the global tuna industry. And tuna is in trouble itself, with some species critically endangered by overfishing.