overfishing

Pirate vessel grave yard with wardens on board 60 miles off Guinea Conakry. © Pierre Gleizes/Greenpeace

When we mention pirates, the most common image that springs to mind is of something comical, stereotyped, and fanciful. 'Pirate' has become synonymous with kid's cartoons, swashbuckling movies, and far-too-many fancy dress outfits. Beyond the likes of Johnny Depp and Captain Pugwash we might just associate piracy with illegal DVDs.

But increasingly real-life modern day pirates are making the news too, with dramatic confrontations in the waters off Africa

Red fish alert! Guppies hit the slopes to help promote 'End of The Line' © Greenpeace / Mackenzie.

Update: guppies go skiing - watch the video »

Park City during Sundance is crazy busy. The Main Street, hotels, and carparks are all chockablock, and everyone has a film to sell or see. So, clearly we needed something to attract a bit of attention and make obvious Greenpeace's support for the End Of The Line film. If you've read my previous posts, you'll be aware that part of the solution (after some complicated logistics) involved five Greenpeace US volunteers  plus two red fish suits from Greenpeace Netherlands (thank you guys!).

Orange roughy: live ones can make an unusual contribution to stemming climate change  © Greenpeace / MacKenzie

Dramatic title perhaps, but maybe not quite so far-fetched. Here in sunny Sundance, one of the questions that has been coming up repeatedly at showings of the End Of The Line movie is, "What about climate change?", assuming rightly that a warming planet will have implications for our fish populations too. Well my practised response to this before I got here was simply that the effects of climate change make all of the issues of rapacious overfishing all the more important. They make the need for precaution when it comes to fishing, and the need for fully protected areas essential.

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.

Oi - Oishi, No! (to bluefin tuna on the menu, that is). Guppie spreads the word at Sundance © Greenpeace / MacKenzie

I'm writing this from Utah, a landlocked state in the US, which hosts the Sundance Film Festival each year. Sundance is known as the place for new independent films, and we're here to support a great new documentary movie called 'End of the Line', based on former Daily Telegraph environment correspondent Charles Clover's book about what overfishing is doing to our oceans.

Latest updates from the impressive ProtectPlanetOcean web site provide convincing support for Greenpeace's long-held contention that marine reserves provide the best long-term solution to the problems of overfishing and pollution which threaten the world's marine ecosystems. In case you've forgotten marine reserves are protected areas, national parks at sea where no fishing or other extractive industries (such as oil, gas or gravel extraction) are permitted.

The site has pulled together studies of 124 marine reserves around the world - scientific peer-reviewed research published in academic journals - to provide a clear picture of what has happened where reserves have been established.

Our oceans are the last global commons, and as such are about as effectively regulated as Dodge City when the West was at it's wildest. As recently as 40 years ago they were considered to be an inexhaustible resource. No amount of fishing could possibly make a dent, it seemed, in the teeming mass of ocean life which constantly replenished itself. It was a one-sided arms race, with increasingly advanced fishing techniques maximizing catches: GPS; sonar; trawl nets big enough to catch a jumbo jet; bottom trawling; fish aggregating devices and open-water 'ranching' are just some of the methods employed to extract maximum profit from the seas.

Our 25 metre long 'No Fish No Future' banner looks tiny alongside the giant Albatun Tres

After last week's good news about Pacific Island nations banding together to stop foreign fishing fleets decimating their tuna stocks, the crew of Esperanza yesterday took action against the biggest and most devastatingly efficient tuna catching vessel in the world, the Spanish owned purse seiner Albatun Tres.

Hurrah! At last some good news for threatened Pacific tuna. Eight Pacific Island nations have signed an agreement to stop foreign fishing fleets taking their tuna. Our ship the Esperanza has been in the Pacific for the last seven weeks confronting unscrupulous foreign fleets that take 90 per cent of the fish, and even more of the profit.