tuna

The results are in!

Which tinned tuna brands win, and which ones are fit for the bin? This tinned tuna league table reveals exactly how the tins stack up.

Once upon a time, well actually, three years ago, Tesco promised to help protect our oceans. Just like a knight in shining armour arriving to save the day, they suddenly switched and made the boldest public promise of all the tuna brands to clean up their tins just before we launched a tuna league table in which they were last.

There’s nothing defensible about shark finning. It’s the marine equivalent of the poachers who kill rhinos to hack off their horns or kill elephants to hack off their tusks. It’s not dissimilar to killing bears or tigers for spurious ‘traditional’ cures either. But it happens out at sea, to animals which don’t have big brown eyes, and which aren’t usually touted as cuddly toys or ‘adoptable’. They rarely win public polls on favourite animals, yet they fill column inches every silly scaremongering summer season in the tabloids.

You may have been lucky enough to see the superb National Geographic programme Mission To Save The Ocean last Saturday. If not, don’t worry, I’ll give you the rundown here.

The programme went across the globe to West Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, following Greenpeace campaigners tackling the root causes of overfishing.

Today I saw a tonne of tuna. Literally. I witnessed every tuna landed on a pole and line fishing trip in the Maldives. It was a relatively slow day, 1.3 tonnes of tuna to be precise. A good day starts around 5 tonnes, but conditions were rough out there. And competition was stiff from the other pole and line boats, known as dhonis, fishing near us.