oceans

As you probably know by now, marine reserves have a huge role to play in ensuring a future for our oceans, which is why we fish-huggers campaign so vehemently for them.

The scientists tell us that between 20 and 50 per cent of the seas need to be set aside as fully protected, no-take zones – off-limits to all damaging and destructive activity. That means no mineral extraction, dredging, dumping or fishing.

Getting progress on marine reserves is a bit like juggling with Slinkys  – it's one of those issues where the politics seems to agree with you, but just manages to deliver precious little. Our politicians all say the right thing when it comes to protecting areas of our seas, there are international commitments, and deadlines for creating protected areas, and there is a huge public demand for doing so. Even the fishing industry is not 'in theory' opposed to them.

As ICCAT souvenirs, delegates will be packing their bags in Recife with a delightful polo shirt emblazoned with 'ICCAT' and a bluefin tuna, and a pair of flip-flops in Brazilian colours.

Somehow this is quite fitting.

The meeting has just come to a close, and the rushed final sessions have agreed as much as they could. In that haste, several things were put off to be considered again next year. Like the protection of endangered mako and porbeagle sharks, and measures to reduce the bycatch of seabirds and turtles. These sorts of delays are common in ICCAT when agreements can't be reached. But hey, why do today what you can put off until next year, right?

As I write this, I'm sitting in the plenary room of the ICCAT meeting, whilst Charles Clover's film 'The End of The Line' is being screened. This in itself is a great coup.

In a memorable scene from the film, whilst attending a previous ICCAT meeting, Clover himself chastised the bureaucrats in that meeting for setting irresponsibly high quotas that ignored scientific advice. In his words they were '…negotiating with biology. And you just can't do that, and expect to see the biology survive'.

There are a lot of chickens around Porto de Galinhas, in Brazil , where ICCAT, the body responsible for mismanaging bluefin tuna, and other fish species, is meeting this week.

In this, the second instalment of the 'Our Ocean Wonderland' animations, Stephen Appelby considers the culinary seafood options likely to be open to us once we've emptied the seas of edible fish.

As regular readers will know, Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, better known as the Tokyo Two, are on trial for intercepting a box of whale meat as part of an investigation into an embezzlement ring within Japan's taxpayer-funded 'research' whaling programme.

The Japanese government subsidises the loss-making whaling programme to the tune of US$5 million a year, making the embezzlement of whale meat exposed by Junichi and Toru a significant crime. But instead of the criminals behind the embezzlement facing justice, it's the Toyko Two who find themselves in the dock.

It's finally here.

The movie that changed the way people think about what’s on their dinner plate is hitting a small screen near you. The End of the Line will be screened at 10pm on More4 tomorrow night, Tuesday 20th October.

First of all, apologies to any non-French speakers watching this video, because it's not going to make any sense. So why do I want you to see it? Well, it's more just as supporting evidence (see the transcript below), because this is the statement made by French President Nicolas Sarkozy on 16 July, in which he promised "complete French support regarding the listing of bluefin tuna to the international wild species convention, in order to ban any trade in this fish".

Those of us who've been trying to make sense of what sort of impact destructive overfishing is having on marine life know things are bad - when you have a global fleet with the capacity to catch every edible thing in our oceans four times over, patchy regulations at best, and a massive incentive for fishermen to catch the most valuable species quickly before someone else fishes them out - it's not surprising many fish stocks are in trouble.