You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere someone decided to name a roller-coaster 'bluefin'. The ups, downs, twists, and turns are certainly hard to follow in this fish's political fortunes, and at the end it could end up making us all feel quite sick.

Post the farcical ICCAT meeting we have seen a follow-up meeting of ICCAT’s Pacific counterparts, whose jolly gathering in Tahiti showed a similar lack of ability and spine when it comes down to making useful or necessary decisions.

"You know," Joss said to me in the other day, "one of the most important meetings of this summit isn't happening in Copenhagen. It's happening in Brussels where the heads of state are getting together."

As one of the political campaigning whizz-kids here in the Greenpeace camp, he knows what he's talking about and rather than me paraphrasing on his behalf, watch Joss's short vlog above to see what he means.

Bluefin tuna - sometimes you just can't believe how absurd the story gets.

News today from WWF and a Green MEP show that over an eight-year period the EU bluefin tuna fishing industry received subsidies totalling €34.5m. Yes folks, your tax helped fund the overfishing of a species now teetering on the very brink of extinction. A species that 21 out of 27 EU countries now think should be subject to an international trade ban. Read more »

As you probably know by now, marine reserves have a huge role to play in ensuring a future for our oceans, which is why we fish-huggers campaign so vehemently for them.

The scientists tell us that between 20 and 50 per cent of the seas need to be set aside as fully protected, no-take zones – off-limits to all damaging and destructive activity. That means no mineral extraction, dredging, dumping or fishing.

Getting progress on marine reserves is a bit like juggling with Slinkys  – it's one of those issues where the politics seems to agree with you, but just manages to deliver precious little. Our politicians all say the right thing when it comes to protecting areas of our seas, there are international commitments, and deadlines for creating protected areas, and there is a huge public demand for doing so. Even the fishing industry is not 'in theory' opposed to them.

First of all, apologies to any non-French speakers watching this video, because it's not going to make any sense. So why do I want you to see it? Well, it's more just as supporting evidence (see the transcript below), because this is the statement made by French President Nicolas Sarkozy on 16 July, in which he promised "complete French support regarding the listing of bluefin tuna to the international wild species convention, in order to ban any trade in this fish".

Breaking news just in from Brussels - despite all the doubts and concerns some of us have harboured over the past few weeks, it seems the EU Commission is throwing its weight squarely behind the call for an international ban on the trade of Atlantic bluefin tuna!

This is big news - actually let's make that BIG NEWS.

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.)