You can be confident that the Fair Trade coffee you grab on the way to work helps support local coffee producers in countries from Tanzania to Costa Rica. Sadly, right now the same can’t be said for the tinned tuna on your sandwich at lunch.

New Zealand might be a good place for hobbits, elves and dwarfs and make a spectacular film set, but it's not much fun if you're a shark. This small country at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean is one of the strongholds of shark fishing and finning. Yes, I did say shark finning - that senseless, wasteful fishing method that most enlightened countries have abandoned... But not New Zealand*.

Pledge your support for a ban on shark finning in New Zealand

It's Shark Week this week, so let's focus on shark finning. New Zealand was exposed in a recent TRAFFIC report as being in the top ten countries for the slaughter and export of sharks. Many of those sharks are killed for their fins alone, and New Zealand is a major exporter of shark fins to Hong Kong and the biggest exporter of dried fins to ... Read more >

The back-and-forth on Maui’s dolphins between Government departments, released under the Official Information Act and reported by the Dominion Post over the weekend, is gravely concerning for two reasons.

Firstly, the Ministry of Primary Industries is overstepping its mandate and determining New Zealand’s vote on (or to be precise, against) protection for New Zealand’s unique and critically endangered Maui’s dolphin. The latest population estimate showed only 55 breeding adult Maui’s remain, making this the rarest dolphin in the world. This is undoubtedly an issue that should be led by the Department of Conservation, which in the past decade has carefully rebuilt the kakapo population from a similarly low level.

Secondly, the Ministry of Primary Industry’s insistence on a “no” vote by N... Read more >

Finally, some long-awaited news: New Zealand’s biggest tuna brand, Sealord, has acknowledged that destructive fish aggregating devices are OUT and more sustainable fishing methods are IN. The company announced yesterday afternoon that it will be phasing out the use of FAD-caught tuna by early 2014!

This is great news and makes the weekly supermarket shop easier for mums and dads who will soon be able to have more confidence that their canned tuna hasn’t been caught using methods that can kill sharks, turtles and baby tuna.

It has certainly been a long road to get here. It was two years ago when we first called on all of New Zealand’s major tuna brands to shift to more sustainable tuna sources. Of course, meetings with those companies were already underway, to explain the impact of FADs ... Read more >

If you don’t like the idea of New Zealand becoming the first country to oversee the extinction of a marine dolphin, you should be very worried. I sure am. Six months ago, the NZ Government sought public feedback on its emergency response to the extinction looming over Maui’s dolphin – of which there are estimated to be only 55 adults left.

You wouldn’t want this lot in charge of civil defence, because six months later, we haven’t heard a thing about what they’ve decided to do. Hardly the speed you’d expect in reaction to an emergency, particularly one that could wipe these native dolphins off the face of the planet, forever.

When the public consultation ended last November, Wellington artist Sheyne Tuffery produced 55 beautiful artworks  representing the 55 remaining adult Maui’s dolphins. ... Read more >