How To Save The Bluefin today announces it will merge with The Black Fish to build a stronger alliance in the fight against bluefin tuna overfishing. Both organisations will continue under the banner of The Black Fish. We at How To Save The Bluefin are extremely happy with the move. The bluefin tuna needs our help and we are serious about achieving real change for this endangered fish. We need to build a stronger movement to create the necessary change and we feel that within The Black Fish we can make this happen. 

Our project How To Save The Bluefin set up in Antwerp, Belgium, in the autumn of 2010 and has run a variety of campaigns to raise awareness of the demise of the bluefin tuna. An animation was made to explain the bluefin tuna issue which was translated in six languages and gathered a lot of media attention. We went on to meet with local councils in several Belgian cities to discuss the ongoing sale of bluefin tuna meat and our Chopstick Guerilla saw activists attaching protest messages to chopsticks at local sushi and seafood restaurants.

"It is important that the bluefin tuna gets the attention and protection it deserves. The fact that a fish this threatened is still sold in cities across Europe asks for action. We welcome Michael, Diederik and all the others at How To Save The Bluefin to help make this happen" according to Wietse van der Werf, co-founder of The Black Fish.

The Black Fish will formally announce its upcoming bluefin tuna campaign later this year. Please follow them on Facebook and Twitter for the latest updates.

Thank you for all your continuous support.

Michael & Diederik

Recently we got an invitation from Fred, asking to partner up with the forum he's running: Planet Ocean Alliance. POA is probably the most interesting place for world-wide conservationists online, and is a hotbed of ideas and campaigns. In fact, this project How To Save The Bluefin was started after getting the inspiration by everything on Planet Ocean Alliance. We are more than happy to call POA our new partner, and are thrilled they are helping us to win the video contest we're trying to win. 

If you haven't got an account yet, we urge you to take a look at Planet Ocean Alliance. If you ever have a question or need more information on everything ocean-related, just ask and they'll be dozens of members willing to help you.

Together with the support of POA we can announce you that we are getting a real chance at winning the video contest we're in. Of the few dozen contestors, we immediately went to the 20th position, only to climb up to 7th place this week. Thanks to the consistent amount of daily votes we even went to the 6th place last night! We need your daily votes, so we can win up to $10,000 that we can use to protect our oceans. It's just one click a day!

We are sending daily emails to our friends and family as a reminder to vote every day. If you want to help us and be part of this, please email us at howtosavethebluefin@gmail.com and we'll add you to this list. 

Our animation video "The Story of the Bluefin" is now part of the Sea The Change Conservation Contest, organised by PADI.com

Please vote for our video, as we could win up to $10,000 for our non-profit organisation HOWTOSAVETHEBLUEFIN.com
We are the only entry that uses animated video, so we are standing out amongst all the other competitors. It would be wonderful if you'd help us to win this prize, as it would allow us to take more action for the survival of the bluefin.

Please vote on this link.

The FINAL 011 MASTER EXHIBITION was a blast. Not only did we recently graduate with this project, we also got lots of interest from the visitors of the event. We screened a short documentary of our project as well, and got the word out to new supporters.

All our campaigns were shown on different screens.

Our postcards for the public.

We feel that more and more people are supporting the cause, and there are popping up new initiatives everywhere. An Australian based group called Bluefin Action is battling for the survival of the Southern Bluefin tuna, perhaps even more threatened than the Atlantic Bluefin tuna. They now are trying to get the species off the menu in Vue de Monde, a so called environmentally friendly restaurant that claims that "the Southern Bluefin tuna have never been endangered", which is an ignorant statement and a blatant lie. 

Follow Bluefin Action on twitter, and give them your full support.

We are using the last amounts of our money to acquire some additional gear. We still had a lot left from what HR BVBA sponsored us a few months ago, and we bought six important life jackets from it.

With the help of DPM BVBA we could buy a decent flash light which can be used while diving, a compass, a good quality headtorch and a pack of batteries.

But by far the coolest thing we bought was this nightvision. Together with the profits of STAY TUNED and the additional help of DPM BVBA we managed to buy this one and it's working great!

Next step is to figure out how to use our big collection of objects in the best possible way.

Today is World Oceans Day. A good day to remember in what state we find our oceans. Because sometimes an image says more than a thousand words, we’d simply like to show you this animated GIF, comparing the fish stocks of 1900 with the ones of 2000.

And guess what: it will be worse in 2050. That’s the year scientists predicted the total collapse of industrial fisheries, simply by the fact that most of the fish species will be gone. That’s right: they will be whiped out from our planet.

But we are thrilled to see that there are different people who are dedicating their life to the conservation of maritime life around the world. At this moment, the crew of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is patrolling the dangerous Libyan waters in search for vessels that are fishing for bluefin tuna. Due to the military conflict, the Libyan waters are declared a no-fishing zone and this makes every fishing vessel illegal. With the support of NATO, Sea Shepherd can intercept every vessel they encounter. And unfortunately they already did.

The Steve Irwin is in hot pursuit of Sainte Sophie Francis 2. The vessel was discovered this morning sneaking into Libyan territorial waters with nets onboard her decks. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) confirms that the Sainte Sophie Francis 2 recently departed from Malta, has no legal right to be carrying nets this year. 

Check out their website for daily updates and give them your full support.

Coincidentally, today on World Oceans Day, we received a present. Martin Taylor, member of the NoTanx freediving club in London, sent us a funky dive mask. He had this one just laying around so he thought we could do better things with it. We’ll be using diving gear during our campaigns in the future, so we’re very happy to have a good quality dive mask.

The cool thing is that Martin added some postcards he made for the promotion of Sharkwater, a real eye-opening movie about the disgusting sharkfin industry. You should watch it. We’re quite sure you won’t be eating sharkfin soup again.

He thought we could use these postcards by selling them for our cause, and that’s what we are doing. We have a limited edition of four packages, each with 4 hand-made postcards and envelopes. We’re asking 5 euro for a package, so these will be gone in no time. Contact us if you want one, and we’ll work something out.

We want to thank you, Martin, for the dive mask and the postcards. They all will help us in saving those poor tunas. Thanks!

We are getting closer and closer to the end of our project. Our project of collecting as much effective gear as possible so we could go to the Mediterranean and free those illegally caught bluefin tunas. But we're not there yet, and we still need different objects that are inevitable for our campaign.

We talked to DPM, a company specialized in turning, milling and grinding for batch production and mechanical engineering. They already helped us with creating our massive piggy bank, and when they heard we were in need of some more objects, they didn't hesitate to give us a budget we could use to buy whatever we needed. 

We acquired a very cool monocular which will come in VERY handy for observing the activities of fishermen in the Mediterranean. It comes with a sturdy box, a tripod and a little piece to connect the monocular to our digital camera. We are extremely happy we got this piece of equipment.

We also bought three second hand binoculars. They're not brand new but they are in good shape and they work fine, at only a fraction of the cost of three new binoculars. That way we are saving enough money to buy some other objects which we will get next week. 

Our thanks goes out to DPM. Thanks to them we are once again one step closer in getting to the Mediterranean. DPM can offer you a personal and complete guidance from scratch to final product. So don't hesitate to contact them if you're ever in need of Computer Numercal Control operations. They're great in their work and they care about our oceans. Check out their website for more information.

In April we attended the Skills to Sea Workshop organised by the Sailboat Project. It was an incredible week, where we met a bunch of dedicated and skilled people from all around Europe, all with the interest of saving our oceans.

One of those people was Emmo. He lives and works at Amrum, a small island in the North Sea that is part of Germany. Once in a while he cleans up the beaches of the island, and what he regularly finds are big chunks of wax. This wax comes from big ships who dump them at see while rinsing out their tanks, and is seen by lots of marine life as a tasty snack. Unfortunately, this wax can't be digested and most of the sea life dies a long and painful death.

By taking away these chunks of wax Emmo is saving numerous creatures of our seas. But the beautiful part of it is that he recycles this discarded wax into new candles. The profits he makes with these candles are given to projects who are focusing on conservating our oceans. And guess what. Emmo sent us 20 candles which we can sell to you!

They come in all sizes and shapes, depending on the found wax and the recycled glass jars. We are selling them for €10 or €5. We can assure you that 100% of the profits is going to the purchase of materials that will be used this summer on a mission to prevent the bluefin tuna from becoming extinct. But you need to be fast! We already sold half of the candles to friends and family, who couldn't resist these cute hand-made pieces of art. Just contact us if you want to buy one, and we'll work something out.

We want to thank Emmo for his continuous job at preventing garbage from re-entering the North Sea, and for all the work he puts in these candles. Once again the effort of a small group of dedicated people will make a difference in the end.

Join us, and we will save the bluefin tuna.

This week we received a huge present in our mail box... 

... coming all the way from England!

A few days before that we got a very friendly mail from Nisha Vasavda, so we knew a bit what this was all about. Nisha wanted to help us with our project, and kindly donated us a pair of diving fins. Here's a little text she mailed us.

"I won these Beuchat fins in a competition with the freedive club NoTanx, started by Andy Laurie and Marcus Greatwood. I am by no means the best diver in the club, but the competitions are for fun, rewarding people based on individual goals. As I am happy with my existing kit, we decided to donate the fins - kindly provided by Aquanaut, Kingston, UK - to your very worthy cause. I hope they carry you swiftly and safely on your missions to save the bluefin tuna!. Good luck! Nisha :-)"