tuna

Some days just have it all.

A long day ends at 5am after my piracy watch onboard the Rainbow Warrior. We cross the Indian Ocean, moving through a piracy zone. Our security toolbox includes the eyes and ears of crew and campaigners onboard this beautiful vessel. My two hour stint was beneath a mind-bending lattice of stars and shooting stars striping the sky, with Orion’s belt crowning the massive A-frame that bestrides the Warrior.

The Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior has spent the past few days hosting all the key players in one of the Indian Ocean’s prime tuna hubs – Port Louis in Mauritius.

Today our cooperation with Mozambique’s Ministry of Fisheries comes to an end after two weeks. As part of a ship tour of the Indian Ocean with the Rainbow Warrior that started in Mozambique, we have been patrolling a large portion of Mozambique’s waters and facilitating inspections of foreign fishing vessels that are targeting mainly tuna and endangered sharks.

I’m here in Bangkok at a gathering of hundreds of tuna business officials, policy-makers and even a few environmental advocates like myself. It’s been a long week of discussion about the future of the industry, including a lot about what we all call sustainability fish for the future.

The sands in the tuna campaign have shifted again, and the oceans and tuna will ultimately be better off for it. Our Italian colleagues have just announced that the local tinned tuna brand Mareblu has committed to stop using Fads (fish aggregation devices) - the destructive marine minefields that have been blighting the oceans for decades.