It was a successful day for the Rainbow Warrior's bottom trawling campaign, but a traumatic one for the ocean floor. We spent our time haring around in hot pursuit of trawlers, intent on catching them as they drew their haul. Our teams had a variety of encounters - the skipper of one trawler dragged his net on the surface while making a wide turn, in an vain attempt to make life difficult for our camera people. At the other end of the scale, the crew of another trawler gave us a Chinese language newspaper, featuring a picture of the Rainbow Warrior on the front page!

We followed many ships, bearing witness to all sorts of things being dragged up from the ocean floor - as well as more of the bottom dwelling fish of the last few days, today we saw starfish, sea stars (starfish), squid, sea urchins, huge rocks and most importantly of all, coral.

Our boat crews were trailing the Chang Xing, in expectation of large-scale disposal of bycatch. They weren't disappointed. Logi positioned the Waka Nui under the bycatch chute of the huge, rusty trawler, while Roscoe netted the dead discarded fish sliding down. Afterwards, as they were collecting bycatch floating on the surface, sharp-eyed Roscoe spied a twig of black coral, and managed to retrieve it.

It's astonishing to think that this brittle sprig of black coral - an endangered species - could have survived the journey. Probably snapped from a larger piece of coral on the bottom, it somehow endured being hauled up through one kilometre of water, in a net packed with the crushing weight of fish. On the surface, it was dragged through the water, up a rusty steel ramp, pulled out of the net, and hurled down a bycatch chute into the sea again, where it bobbed around before being spotted by 'Hawkeye' Roscoe.

According to Kat, the marine biologist onboard the Rainbow Warrior, this piece of black coral proves that bottom-dwelling organisms need protection on the high seas. Although considerable damage has already occurred, its not too late to save surviving corals. Kat described the black coral as relatively rare, and slow growing. "Some species are only found in extremely localised areas around New Zealand (and nowhere else in the world that we are aware of). These corals are the foundation of unique deep-sea communities and their destruction will affect everything else living in or near them on the sea floor."

Back on the Rainbow Warrior, morale was high. After listening to some of the bottom fishing industry saying they don't drag their nets on the bottom, there's been a few wisecracks amongst the crew about 'rocks swimming in mid-water'.