What better way to explore my new camera, the Canon EOS 6D than from my own office window? Call me lazy (is it that time of year?), but this time, very little effort was required to shoot some test pictures. A gang of tree surgeons were pruning the sycamore trees right outside my house - and living on the second floor means that I was able to capture them on eye-level, although that's a good 30 feet off the ground. In any case, it made for interesting pictures, and phantastic image quality thanks to the superb 6D.
23 December 2013
18 December 2013
Shifting Perspectives
What more could you want on a lazy Sunday? Good light, a bit of energy and three wonderful tilt-shift lenses in the bag to experiment with. Following on from the somewhat old Tilting & Shifting, I have once again found my more playful visual side and went for a walk through London's east end.
12 November 2013
Scotland with the G1X
After some downtime, I decided to purchase a new compact camera, the Canon G1X. In early October, we set off on a 5-day trip across scenic Scotland, with wind, rain, clouds 'n all. Given that the light was often poor, the weather unwelcoming, the sights didn't fail to excite, and neither did my nifty little new camera. The image quality I am very excited about - shot in Raw, the detail and sharpness is impressive, the dynamic range pretty good and thus the post-production requirements fairly minimal.
But enough tech talk - enjoy some of the images!
But enough tech talk - enjoy some of the images!
14 August 2013
Tuna Wars
Following publication of my Indian Ocean Tuna Trail story, it is very nice to see my esteemed colleague David O'Shea's piece on the tuna story being finally aired by Australia's SBS Dateline.
If you have 15 minutes to spare, it's well worth watching.
If you have 15 minutes to spare, it's well worth watching.
6 August 2013
On the Tuna Trail
Having been in the Indian Ocean on a two-month Greenpeace expedition documenting the nature of Tuna fishing, this story is difficult to tell. Although we had a well-equipped ship, radar, satellite internet, inflatable boats, and even a helicopter at our disposal, monitoring fishing activities in the vast expanse of sea is like looking for a needle in a very large haystack.
So we trace the tuna trail back to its origins. It begins in the middle of the Indian Ocean, several hundred miles north of Mauritius in the notorious ‘Reefer Triangle’, a maritime no-man's land on the unregulated high seas where fishing vessels rendezvous with reefer ships to offload their catch of Yellowfin Tuna. Here we witnessed several transhipments from Asian longliners onto the Tuna Queen, a Panama-registered reefer ship operating for Japanese interests. The hauls disappearing into the Tuna Queen's frozen hold were impressive: some fish as large as the men who caught them, and their quantity staggering. The crews on these boats, recruited from some of the poorest nations in Asia and Africa, earn a pittance compared to their catch.
Patrolling across the Indian Ocean, we encountered several fish aggregating devices (FADs). Typically built from bamboo, these netted floating pallets provide shade underneath and attract a multitude of fish. Used primarily by French and Spanish purse seine vessels, they cast their large nets around schools of fish concentrated by the FADs and then proceed to scoop everything up on board, including juvenile fish and common bycatch species such as sharks, turtles and dolphins.
Fully laden, these boats steam back to port to offload at local canneries or onto reefer vessels such as the Antilla moored in Antsiranana, Madagascar. As payment to the dock workers doing the actual offloading, the purse seine vessels dump some of the bycatch and fish damaged during the scooping on the quayside. In effect, the locals receive some of the crumbs whilst the rich pickings remain firmly in the pockets of the foreign fleet owners.
To add insult to injury, Madagascar's lagoon fishermen, working from their small outrigger ‘Pirogues’, struggle as fish prices become depressed by a lively local market that springs up during the tuna season. Their meagre catch, usually not more than a basket for a day out on the water, provides little more than the bare minimum income.
In Mauritius, we encountered similar fates. The artisanal fishermen of Black River Bay working in their little boats lament declining catch rates and disappearing fish stocks. They squarely blame the large, industrial fishing fleets operating in their waters for the demise of tuna and other species. As the Mauritian government is more interested in quick cash from the sale of unlimited fishing licences to foreign fleets than in a future for its own coastal fishermen, these guys struggle for survival. Making their discontent known, the local fishermen staged a protest at the annual Indian Ocean Tuna Commission meeting. Needless to say, it seemed to fall on deaf ears and tired eyes of the bureaucrats attending within.
Given that the tuna industry is a global multi-billion dollar enterprise, with weak to non-existent instruments for regulation, it feels like we have only scratched the surface, and this story deserves more investigation. Monitoring the Indian Ocean fishery is almost impossible and the scope for abuse through legal loopholes and corruption correspondingly high. The transshipments we have seen on the high seas are not illegal and the quantity and origin of the catch remains largely undocumented. The majority of the boats operating there are owned and operated by faraway fishing nations such as Spain, France, Taiwan, Japan and others. It is them who reap the benefits from this highly profitable ‘free-for-all’ situation at the expense of the Indian Ocean fishery and the countries it is meant to serve.
So we trace the tuna trail back to its origins. It begins in the middle of the Indian Ocean, several hundred miles north of Mauritius in the notorious ‘Reefer Triangle’, a maritime no-man's land on the unregulated high seas where fishing vessels rendezvous with reefer ships to offload their catch of Yellowfin Tuna. Here we witnessed several transhipments from Asian longliners onto the Tuna Queen, a Panama-registered reefer ship operating for Japanese interests. The hauls disappearing into the Tuna Queen's frozen hold were impressive: some fish as large as the men who caught them, and their quantity staggering. The crews on these boats, recruited from some of the poorest nations in Asia and Africa, earn a pittance compared to their catch.
Patrolling across the Indian Ocean, we encountered several fish aggregating devices (FADs). Typically built from bamboo, these netted floating pallets provide shade underneath and attract a multitude of fish. Used primarily by French and Spanish purse seine vessels, they cast their large nets around schools of fish concentrated by the FADs and then proceed to scoop everything up on board, including juvenile fish and common bycatch species such as sharks, turtles and dolphins.
Fully laden, these boats steam back to port to offload at local canneries or onto reefer vessels such as the Antilla moored in Antsiranana, Madagascar. As payment to the dock workers doing the actual offloading, the purse seine vessels dump some of the bycatch and fish damaged during the scooping on the quayside. In effect, the locals receive some of the crumbs whilst the rich pickings remain firmly in the pockets of the foreign fleet owners.
To add insult to injury, Madagascar's lagoon fishermen, working from their small outrigger ‘Pirogues’, struggle as fish prices become depressed by a lively local market that springs up during the tuna season. Their meagre catch, usually not more than a basket for a day out on the water, provides little more than the bare minimum income.
In Mauritius, we encountered similar fates. The artisanal fishermen of Black River Bay working in their little boats lament declining catch rates and disappearing fish stocks. They squarely blame the large, industrial fishing fleets operating in their waters for the demise of tuna and other species. As the Mauritian government is more interested in quick cash from the sale of unlimited fishing licences to foreign fleets than in a future for its own coastal fishermen, these guys struggle for survival. Making their discontent known, the local fishermen staged a protest at the annual Indian Ocean Tuna Commission meeting. Needless to say, it seemed to fall on deaf ears and tired eyes of the bureaucrats attending within.
Given that the tuna industry is a global multi-billion dollar enterprise, with weak to non-existent instruments for regulation, it feels like we have only scratched the surface, and this story deserves more investigation. Monitoring the Indian Ocean fishery is almost impossible and the scope for abuse through legal loopholes and corruption correspondingly high. The transshipments we have seen on the high seas are not illegal and the quantity and origin of the catch remains largely undocumented. The majority of the boats operating there are owned and operated by faraway fishing nations such as Spain, France, Taiwan, Japan and others. It is them who reap the benefits from this highly profitable ‘free-for-all’ situation at the expense of the Indian Ocean fishery and the countries it is meant to serve.
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