oceans

For a taste of the violence Greenpeace activists encountered on Friday as they tried to free bluefin tuna from purse-seine fishing nets, look no further than the video below. But be warned: there are some close-up images of a serious injury which are liable to make you lose your lunch.

We just had a discussion about whether to promote this video. Other Greenpeace offices have chosen to use it (including our Turkish colleagues, hence the Turkish title) although it's quite close to the knuckle (or shin bone, to be more precise). Yet it shows not only the determination of everyone on board our two ships to put the brakes on the extinction of bluefin tuna, but also the violence and intimidation they've been confronted with. So here it is.

Greenpeace took action in the Mediterranean yesterday to stop some French purse-seiners catching bluefin tuna. And it's fair to say, things kicked off a bit.

At long last, the weather had calmed down and the sea had warmed, and whilst the seas here certainly are not brimming with bluefin, we knew the seiners were sniffing some potential catch. When we saw them coming together at lunchtime we raced to the scene with both the Rainbow Warrior along with the Arctic Sunrise, our not-so-secret second ship in the Mediterranean.

When we got to the scene we quickly worked out that there was a net with some fish, so we deployed immediately to set about freeing the tuna. We knew it would be complicated, there were seven fairly big purse seiners, some support vessels and a whole heap of skiffs and inflatables working with the seiners. The smaller boats were holding the net open whislt the bigger boats were circling to try and protect the catch. Meanwhile a transport cage was being towed towards the scene for the tuna to be moved into. We knew we had to act fast.

Activists are pulled from the sea as one of our inflatables sinks © Parsons/Greenpeace

Some disturbing news is coming in from the Mediterranean where, for the past two weeks, the Rainbow Warrior and the Arctic Sunrise have been waiting for the bluefin tuna fishing season to begin. As Willie (who's on board the Arctic Sunrise) reported earlier in the week, they've been waiting along with the fishing fleet for the bad weather to subside and the tuna to arrive.

It's been a long, frustrating wait for the crew but finally, this afternoon the waiting was over. Having found a fishing vessel - the Jean Marie Christian 6 - towing a purse-seine net, both ships launched inflatables with the intention of submerging one side of the net to free the tuna trapped within, but the crews of other fishing vessels intervened in a manner which can only be described as the direct opposite of peaceful and proportional.

One of the UK activists has been injured by (and I'm wincing as I type) a grappling hook through the leg. He's being evacuated to hospital but I'm told he'll be okay. We've also lost two inflatables which were slashed with knives then sunk when the fishing vessels ran over them.

A difficult start then but our two ships in the Med are going to keep taking action to shut down the bluefin fishing operations.

More updates soon.

By seeking to compromise, the EU may actually be sanctioning commercial whaling. Whale fail!

Ask anyone who the bad guys are on fish and whales. The resounding answer will most probably start with the letter 'J' and end in 'apan'.

And with good reason. Not only is the Japanese government's recent record on (and defence of) commercial whaling scandalous, but as huge consumers of seafood Japan plays a major role in driving the fishing industry worldwide. Like many developed nations, Japan has long since outgrown its ability to depend on local fish in its own waters, so it also has a distant-water fleet scooping up seafood around the globe.

There's an analogy I sometimes use to explain the problem of overfishing. 

Imagine you are in a car hurtling at full speed down a hillside towards a cliff. Your foot is fully down on the accelerator. You have four options. Keep the foot down and plunge to your certain doom. Slam on the brakes and try to stop before you reach the cliff. Take your chances and jump out of the moving car. Or take your foot off the accelerator and just hope you slow down in time. 

Applying that analogy to Atlantic bluefin tuna, what needs to happen is the brake-slamming option.

We're out here in the middle of the Mediterranean. But at the moment, the bluefin tuna don't seem to be here.

The fishing boats are here. The tugs and support vessels are here. The French navy ships which are monitoring/protecting the fishery are here... but the fish aren't.

Perhaps it's just not warm enough yet. Perhaps they're looking in the wrong places. Perhaps the fish are late.

The worst possible scenario for everyone is that the fish have gone.

Krill and other plankton are being viewed as a potential food source, but at what cost? (c) cbcastro

We humans are an inventive species. We never tire of finding new ways to do things. Just as we are plundering ever-stupider places to feed our dependency on fossil fuels, so we're unerringly heading to the most environmentally-damaging places to feed our hunger for fish.

The Marine Stewardship Council has just decided to certify Antarctic krill. This is utter madness.

Another tin of tuna, because we know you can't get enough of these pictures

The old saying about a can of worms, is based on the idea that once you open said can, it's impossible to get the worms back in and close it again. Who knew that was true of cans of tuna too?

But fresh from our update on some of the international branded laggards yesterday, comes some news of more developments from some of the UK retailers.