Black Foils win SailGP award for anti-trawling swim campaign
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- Black Foils won SailGP's Better Planet award in the Impact League at the Great Britain Sail Grand Prix in Portsmouth after Live Ocean — co-founded by team co-chiefs Blair Tuke and Peter Burling — supported Jono Ridler's Swim4TheOcean, a 1,367km staged swim down New Zealand's North Island completed over 90 days and 468 hours in the water.
- Ridler arrived in Wellington in April to a crowd of 5,000 and delivered a petition bearing 73,647 signatures to parliament calling for an end to bottom trawling, a practice Tuke says can destroy corals and crustaceans "that have taken hundreds or thousands of years to grow" in minutes.
- Polling commissioned by WWF-New Zealand and published in April found 47% of New Zealanders identify bottom trawling as the greatest threat to the marine environment and 90% support limiting the practice, while in the UK the government outlined plans in June 2025 to ban bottom trawling in 41 Marine Protected Areas before rejecting an outright ban in September 2025.
- New Zealand remains the only country that still bottom trawls seamounts in the South Pacific, yet prime minister Christopher Luxon renewed a permit for a vessel to continue the practice while the campaign was gaining momentum, arguing environmental impacts must be balanced against economic benefits — even though deep ocean seamount trawling represents less than 7% of New Zealand's deepwater fisheries exports.
- Live Ocean is calling for new trawling permits on seamounts to be banned, for New Zealand seamounts to be fully protected by 2027, and for a government-led transition of the fishing industry away from bottom trawling entirely, with Tuke pointing to November's general election as a decisive moment for marine protection policy.
- Tuke and Burling launched Live Ocean in 2019 after witnessing ocean degradation during their sailing careers — which include 2016 Olympic gold and 2017 America's Cup titles — and Tuke says the foundation is "in our DNA," with both men running the charity and the team rather than partnering with an external organization like every other SailGP squad.
Why it matters: The campaign's 73,647 signatures land just months before New Zealand's November election, sharpening a vote-defining fight over whether to override Luxon's balancing argument — undermined by the fact that seamount trawling makes up under 7% of deepwater exports — and possibly halt permits on seamounts where corals take centuries to grow.
