This female Caribbean Reef Shark in Roatan apparently survived a finning - most do not © CC yukikokubo

Tesco have just announced that they're going to stop selling shark fins in their stores in Thailand.

This follows some bad press on the issue and subsequent lobbying by the Shark Trust to clean up their act.

Sharks are a dividing issue with people – some people love them and are fascinated by them, others are terrified of them. Whilst sharks have an ferocious and fearsome reputation, and any shark attack or alleged sightings of man-eating great whites off Cornwall make the news, we rarely hear of the impact we humans are having on sharks. And we are having an enormous impact.

Emily is today's contributor to our spring blog relay - catch up on entries from other Greenpeace staff.

I've been working at Greenpeace for just over two years, before that I was a volunteer with both the climate team and the active supporters unit as well as an activist. I now work in the actions unit - a job I love - we deal with the logistics and equipment involved in all of our non-violent direct actions.  

Today I feel as if I am half here in our peaceful, light-filled office in London, and half in Brussels filled with mixed feelings of anticipation, adrenalin, moral strength and the odd moment of fear. I have just returned from a three day trip to Brussels where I went with a team of 38 UK activists to be part of a huge direct action that involved 340 activists from 20 different countries.

Bailing out the planet in Brussels © Eric de Mildt/Greenpeace

Hundreds of Greenpeace volunteers from 16 countries arrived in Brussels today and set up a barricade around the conference centre where EU finance ministers are meeting to discuss funding options to tackle climate change. Linking arms to block the exits, the volunteers were determined not to let the politicians out until they agreed a proposal to bail out the planet.

(Twitter was a-buzz with regular updates from the scene - look back over the #climateaction tag.)

In many ways the bluster from Europe's fisheries ministers the week before Christmas is as predictable as a pantomime script, if only it were meant to be funny! They all trumpet a 'fair deal' and talk about 'striking a balance', and most hilariously, 'respecting the science'. But in reality short-term political expediency continues to trump scientific reality. Today the EU announced its fishing quotas for 2009, as usual doing their best to ignore their own scientists' recommendations. Instead they agreed to increase quotas for endangered North Sea cod by 30 per cent, after the scientists had recommended that to be safe they shouldn't be catching any.

Despite the gloom coming out of the EU climate talks at the end of last week (and the non-event that UN discussions on the same topic in Poznan appear to have been), there is one ray of hope shining from Brussels in the form of the Renewable Energy Target which will set binding goals for EU governments on sourcing energy from renewable sources.

It's been a tough road, not least because of ex-business secretary John Hutton's attempts to weaken the deal. Then it looked like some countries - Italy and Poland were the ringleaders - were going to knobble the agreement by demanding it be reviewed in 2014 but a compromise was put forward and a deal has been reached.

This blog by Greenpeace UK exective director John Sauven first appeared on the Guardian's Comment Is Free.

As the science of climate change gets increasingly urgent, the will of Europe's political leaders to act on the climate crisis seems to be weakening by the day.

The EU climate package was meant to herald a new and unprecedented level of ambition in tackling climate change. Compared to what the science dictates, we're still way, way off the mark. The deal suffered from destructive forces within the EU representing their own country's self interests at the expense of an EU-wide deal.

If you've been wondering what's been happening on the light bulb front since our Woolworths campaign last year (and much as they were in our bad books, it's sorry to see them go), there's been some developments on the European stage where politicians have been voting on plans to improve their efficiency and so reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the EU.

The good news is that, on Tuesday, the EU has at long last agreed on a ban of inefficient incandescent light bulbs; the somewhat worse news is that we'll have to wait several years for it to come into full effect. In the meantime, inefficient bulbs will still be on sale and given the desperate need to reduce emissions, it's not enough and it's not soon enough.

I've just received an email about this action being spearheaded by the UK Youth Delegation at Poznan. Pick up the phone and make the call!

Right now, Gordon Brown is preparing to meet with other European heads of state to sign a crucial climate change deal. This deal is the first of its kind - and the rest of the world will use this as their example. If it’s not ambitious enough (and all signs point that way) this deal will jeopardise our future.

We have a small window of opportunity to change this. In the next 24 hours let’s get as many of us as possible to call Gordon Brown and ask him for the strong climate deal that we deserve!

1. Call this number - 0207 930 4433 (No.10 switchboard)
2. Say who you are, where you’re from and ask to leave a message for Gordon Brown
3. The operator will tell you that you can’t leave a message and should send a letter instead. Tell him/her that this is urgent, and you want to see Gordon push for a strong climate deal on Thursday
4. Call three friends and get them to call Gordon too
5. Forward this video on to everyone you know
6. Feel warm and fuzzy that you’ve exercised your democratic right!