Stopping cod trawlers fishing the hard way

We're still out here in the North Sea talking to trawlermen to convince them to stop fishing cod to extinction, and taking action against those who just won't listen.

For a few days now, we've had no luck locating cod fishing vessels, but that finally changed last night when we came across a Scottish trawler fishing for cod 40 miles east of Unst, the most northerly point of the Shetland Isles. They were reluctant to talk to us, so we decided to wait until morning and pay them a visit.

The day dawned bright, clear and fairly calm, so we launched our two largest inflatables, the Grey Whale and the Mermaid, and tracked them until they started trawling - at which point we put a swimmer in the water in their path to try and stop them.

Clad in a survival suit and holding on to a floating sign emblazoned with 'STOP: Cod in Crisis', our intrepid volunteer Cat placed herself in front of the boat in an effort to stop it fishing.

The trawler, the Endurance out of Banff, didn't change course and she was swept off to the side in the ship's wake before being picked up by the Mermaid and bravely deciding to go back in the water for another go. Although ultimately unsuccessful this time, the three hours or so spent disrupting the trawler's fishing efforts will definitely mean that they caught less cod than would otherwise have been the case.

North Sea cod is currently classified as a 'threatened and declining species', and has been for the past five years. EU Scientists say that a cod stock in the North Sea of 150,000 tonnes is the bare minimum required before fishing should be allowed, yet right now stocks are less than half that amount.

Politicians need to act now to give threatened species like cod time to recover. You can help by writing to environment minister David Miliband and demanding that he delivers a network of marine reserves in two forthcoming pieces of legislation, the UK Marine Bill and the EU Marine Strategy Directive.