bycatch

We're only a few days in to 2011, but already this year is shaping up to be a big one in our campaign to end the plunder of the oceans.

There's a well-known model of how dodgy big business deals with campaigns against them. To summarise, it goes a bit like this:

• Company X gets some bad press for doing something wrong, especially bad press if it kills lots of charismatic megafauna;
• Company X initially retaliates saying, 'It's all lies, honest';
• Company X then admits it isn't all lies, but comes up with some way of kicking the issue into the long grass, usually some commission or foundation (ideally with a word like 'conservation' or 'sustainable' in its title) or some interminable period of gathering research, in the hope it all blows over and people forget what they were upset about.

When good things go bad: a purse-seine in action

Greenpeace is not against purse-seining, which may surprise some people. Sure it's a big industrial-looking fishing operation, involving huge nets and catching lots of fish. But that's not always a bad thing.

If we are to assume we're still going to catch and eat fish, then purse-seining as a method is probably going to be something that continues. Purse-seining involves setting a large circular wall of net around fish, then 'pursing' the bottom together to capture them. Where purse-seining is best used is with large single-species schools of fish, that shoal tightly together. Examples like herring or mackerel spring to mind. These can be caught relatively 'cleanly' by purse-seining.

It's only a couple of days since the Esperanza set out on the Defending Our Pacific Tour, but already the crew are deeply engaged in the fight to save Pacific tuna from decimation.

Tuna are the main target of industrial fishing fleets from Asia, USA and the EU. Between them they took over 2.5 million tonnes last year alone - a totally unsustainable amount. And the indiscriminate nature of their fishing methods means that thousands of sharks and turtles also die needlessly in their nets.

The Great White shark: more threatened than threatening © CC  hermanusbackpackers

A couple of stories in the press today caught my eye. Both are about what we internally refer to as 'charismatic megafauna' (the big animals people tend to be interested in and care about), but they are also both damning indictments of our failure to protect our oceans and the life that depends on them.

Firstly – in the week of the International Whaling Commission meeting in Madeira, Portugal – whilst lots of countries get together to talk lots and try not to upset each other too much,  the BBC reports that a highly-endangered species of porpoise is being pushed ever closer to extinction.

So I’m 'it' today, and in truth I'm behind with some blogging about the campaign anyway, so it’s about time I wrote something.

As the oceans' campaigner in the office I tend to get asked a lot of very different things in any one day – and quite frankly don't have time to deal with or consider every single oceansy thing that crosses my email box. Over 70 per cent of the planet = a lot of issues…  the issues that are variously piled up on my desk include marine reserves, whaling and over fishing.

And we can work on those with the public, our active supporters, colleagues in other countries and other groups, retailers, industry, politicians, journalists, artists, celebrities and any combination of the above. It's my job to basically do whatever it takes to make oceans campaigning happen – which can lead to very different 'typical days' in the office indeed.