Welcome to 20th Century Fish

Saving the sharks - One billboard at a time.

We all sit and complain that we’re not seeing enough big fish - and we all know that ultimately its due to overfishing in general and the barbaric practice of shark finning in particular. We sit and we complain and usually thats it.

Now SharkSavers and WildAid are running a campaign in China to educate the population about the problems of shark fin soup. 100$ will buy a billboard in China for a year! The first 200 went up late last year. More billboards and a tv campaign are planned.

As China has a rapidly developing middle class and shark fin soup is seen as a status thing demand for shark fins will rise. Its only through education and awareness that we can start to reduce this demand or slow its increase.

This morning my friend, Elisabeth (co-owner of Oceans Below videography centre  on Koh Tao), and I donated money for one.

Now its your turn.

February 2010

The snow will have to wait. I’m off to Thailand for a month. Had an offer for a weeks work and, well, there really is no point going for just a week! I have promised myself a thai cookery course if I can prise myself out of a hammock,

My connecting flight in Hong Kong departs only 55 minutes after schedule arrival. Could I be the only person on the flight who wouldn’t be unhappy with a delay and a forced overnight stay?

I worked there twice and haven’t been since the handover in ’97. It would be fantastic to do the cross harbour ferry one more time at night - surely one of the world most wonderful - and dirt cheap - travel experiences.

Shame they closed the old airport - you used to fly in so low over the buildings you could see people’s washing hanging out and the old runway extended into the harbour  and it looked like you were about to fly straight into the water until the very last minute. On one memorable occasion a plane overshot and did exactly that, ending up floating in the harbour.

Typhoon Burns

Sad news just in. MY Typhoon, the first liveaboard I guided on has been destroyed by fire in dry dock. The CDWS reports:

“The authorities are still investigating the exact cause of the blaze, but preliminary reports indicate that the fire started in the dry dock electricity wiring to MY Typhoon. As a boating incident, the investigation has to be carried out by the Egyptian Maritime Authority.”

Strong winds carried the fire to a at least 3 other liveaboards, although my friend Sonia, who currently works for Emperor Divers tells me 6 boats were destroyed.

Commiserations to the owners and crews.

January 2010

Its that time of year again when a young (?) man’s thoughts turn to snow. I’ve just finished a 2nd long stint on Royal Evolution, packed my dive gear away and started looking for flights. I wish the crew a happy and busy season down there starting again early February.

No firm plans for the snow yet - it’ll probably be Whistler if the winter olympics haven’t made accommodation prohibitively expensive or worse yet completely unavailable.

Sudan - The Deep South Trips

People keep asking me about the trips that go to the deep south of Sudan. Is it worth the extra over the regular trips. The answer has to be a resounding “Yes”.

As well as getting 4 days south of Port Sudan you still get to do most of the sites on the regular itinerary. There is just less repetitive ( and don’t you hate that word in a diving context - it sounds so negative ) diving on some of the main sites.

The only real casualty is the wreck of the Blue Belt -  its position midway between two distant diving areas makes it an important dive spot on the regular trips and the ideal one to sail past at night on the Deep south trips. While an interesting novelty dive, worth diving once due to the remains of  trucks and cars scattered around the reef, it is no substitute for an extra day diving pristine reefs in the south.

Anyway, here is a clip from one of last years deep south trips.

Small victory in the fight for our shark friends

Tesco has apparently stopped selling shark fins in Thailand. Thanks to all of you who wrote in and gave them grief about it. This came from an email sent to a friend.

“Thank you for your further email which has reached the office of our Managing Director and to which I have been asked to reply.

I can appreciate your comments regarding the sale of shark meat in our stores in Thailand.

Our decision to sell shark meat reflected a balance between the very important issues of sustainability and welfare, and the demand from customers in Thailand, where different traditions and values on this issue exist.

We regularly review sales of all our products and have noted that demand for shark meat is relatively low. We have therefore decided to discontinue the sale  of this product in our Thai stores.

Thank you for taking the time to bring your concerns to our attention.

Kind Regards

Helen Duke

Customer Service Executive”

As you can see from the wording of the email they really do not care about sustainability - its all about the money and they just were not making enough their to justify losing business in the UK. Which worked for us this time. 

If any of you are still in Thailand and can pop into a Tesco Lotus  store and check please let know if the fins have been removed or not. if they are still on sales please send me a dated photo.

What you can do next.

Check out local restaurants in your area and approach the management of any that sell shark fin soup. Be polite - explain how barbaric it is - they may well not know - ask them if they would review selling these products. give them a little time to consider the issue - if they knock you back - approach local media and see if anyone is interested in running an environmental story on this issue . maybe knock up some flyers and hand them out outside the restaurant.

On This Site

Never been on a liveaboard? On liveaboards is your guide to Egyptian liveaboards - giving you an idea of what to expect and letting you know why things are organised the way they are. There is even a page on tipping your boat crew with a recommendation of how much and why.

Water Temp has some general advice on exposure suit for Red Sea diving along with some historical water temperature data that may match your forthcoming Egypt or Sudan trip.

For those of you who escaped with a DVD of your trip but no nice colour cover for the box, DVD covers are available here to cover my time on Royal Evolution, Sea Serpent and Typhoon.

If your are going out to join Royal Evolution, or any other liveaboard you should check out the Help the Guide page. Don’t forget to bring Bacon!

All videos on this site need Quicktime 7 or later (free download from Apple here). If you have iTunes installed on your computer you should also have Quicktime.

Bad News for Sharks in the Galapagos

The president of Ecuador has repealed a decree making it legal to sell shark meat and fins provided fishermen don’t actual fish for sharks and its just by-catch. Yeah, right.

At the same time many dive boats have been stopped from operating which leave Darwin and Wolf with no dive boats for several days a week.

Furthermore the Ecuadorian Government has not renewed the contract that it had with Sea Shepherd International, a company that provided ships to patrol Galapagos waters in search of illegal shark fishing. It has been reported that between 400 and 1000 sharks are being barbarically killed each day.

The Shark Trust have a piece on it here.

There have been recent developments since I wrote the above - the link is still valid