After at least four drafts, Sara created a powerpoint of it all, and sent it to Elaine, our land-based webbie in Amsterdam, who's a bit of a whizz when it comes to creating Flash animations. Somehow - I'm not quite clear on this - Sara downloaded a chunk of her brain into Elaine's, enabling her to create the amazing presentation below.

We realise that this pirate fishing is messy business - so if you've any questions, make sure you ask us!

- Dave

Here's Sara:

"O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!"
- English poet Walter Scott

And what a tangled web pirate fishing is. Greenpeace and the Environmental Justice Foundation have documented over 100 of these boats, and found that more than 50% are weaving a very tangled web of deception indeed.

We've seen:

1. Reefer vessels like the Binar 4 offloading boxes of fish in Las Palmas, from trawlers not licensed to fish in Guinean waters

2. Trawlers like Ocean 7 and Osito 89 operating under one name in Las Palmas, then changing their name when they get to Guinea. Same boat, two names.

3. Fishing vessels like the Lian Yun 24. Six days after we first saw it, it was called called Lian Run 13 - the paint was barely dry on the new name - or the partly-rubbed out old name

4. Those Ocean 7 and Osito 89 with their new names - Zenab 3 and Sakoba 1 - well inside the 12 nautical mile zone of Guinea - where only local fishermen are allowed to fish

5. The transfer of fish from trawlers like the Zenab 3, Lian Run 24, Lian Run 29 & Kum Woong 103, to reefers such as the Binar 4 and the Elpis, at sea. Such transfers or transshipments are only allowed in the port of Conakry in Guinea.

We've also seen what seemed like perfectly legitimate activity - ships, such as the Lian Run 24, Lian Run 27, Lian Run 28 and Lian Run 29, fishing with all the right licenses, and others such as the Elpis reefer, helpfully handing out boxes to the Lian Run 25, who then passed them on to Lian Run 29. But hang on...

What they didn't want us to see was when the two sides of the law meet - when legal meets illegal, things get very murky.

FACT: Transshipping anywhere outside the port of Conakry, Guinea - is illegal. So when the Binar 4 sailed 200 miles in the opposite direction from Conakry, into international waters, to hook up with fishing vessels the Lian Run 24, Lian Run 27, Lian Run 28 and Lian Run 29 (all of which are licensed to fish), it looked suspicious. The Binar 4 transshipped fish from them, and started taking it to Las Palmas.

At what point have they ALL broken the law? Easy - the point at which they didn't go to Conakry, to do their transshipment. Basically, the fish are being caught in Guinean waters, and smuggled out of the country without ever being documented by the authorities there.

If you were the skipper of a reefer or trawler, and thought it was okay to transship - in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of the night - from ships (like Sakoba 1 and Kim Marine 511) seen fishing illegally inside Guinea's 12-mile zone , then why would you then switch off all your lights, including navigation lights, and then run away to another country? Maybe you've got something to hide?

- Sara