Having never sailed before I was quite nervous and as we sailed north the seas increasingly grew rougher and rougher. Luckily I discovered I don’t get sea-sick and was eventually called ‘cast-iron gut’ by my crew mates. Despite the rough churning seas and the unwell sounds coming out of the crew’s cabins I felt a great sense of privilege to be sailing aboard a ship with such mana. My jobs on-board consisted of cleaning in the mornings followed by either training in the inflatables or chipping rust for the rest of the day. Things however got a lot more interesting when we found the first of the trawlers we were looking for, the Ocean Reward.

We were sailing into the international waters of the Tasman Sea to do what governments around the world have been unwilling to do so far: stop the bottom trawlers. We tried to do this firstly by attaching an inflatable life raft to its net to stop it from being deployed. The next day we attached a steel cable to the trawl doors, locking them together (trawl doors are large metal hydrodynamic weights that keep the trawl nets open and cause big gouges along the sea floor). While we were never going to be able to stop them completely, what we found in the next few days, really underlined the value in preventing even just a few trawls.

On the West Norfolk Ridge we found another NZ vessel, the Waipori. While we were filming their trawl they hauled in large quantities of endangered black coral and a rare deep-sea crab. And it didn’t stop there. During their second trawl they hauled in a large gorgonian coral, estimated to 500 years old, and then just threw it overboard. These images have caused outrage around the world. And rightly so – it was a sickening thing to watch, almost surreal. We had seen a couple of leaked photos of similar destruction but seeing it first hand is something I will never forget. It really is proof of just how destructive this method of fishing is.

Now back on land I have visited my hometown of Gisborne as part of the roadshow and we have had an amazing response from the people we've met. Folks here are shocked by the images we're showing and are asking how they can get more involved. Gisborne is a city with close links to the sea and our calling for an international moratorium resonates here among people who do not want to see the deep-sea destruction continue.