The Black Fish, a European based, community driven, marine conservation organisation, will be giving a talk at Wright Robinson College in Manchester on the 22nd September 2014 in conjunction with www.freedivers.co.uk.

Through investigation, enforcement and prosecution, the Black Fish organisation works to expose and challenge illegal and destructive fishing practices.

You don’t need a degree in science to do your share in ocean conservation, but you need the right training, tools and resources to be able to apply the talents and skills you already have. With that in mind, The Black Fish have taken a few unprecedented initiatives that aim to lower existing barriers for people interested in getting involved, namely their recently launched Citizen Inspector Network and Training Programme.

The Citizen Inspector Network involves training volunteers as inspectors over the coming years, realising independent monitoring of fishing activity in Europe’s fishing ports and markets.

The Black Fish train you all the way; you’ll visit fishing ports and learn how to recognize and document illegal fishing nets. They will introduce you to the world of coastal patrolling, which will be done by Citizen Inspectors with the required training. To make it sound even more adventurous, since 2013 The Black Fish has made use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to document fishing activity off-shore. This, together with numerous other speciality courses, offered in collaboration with European partner organisations, will give you the opportunity to be a Citizen Inspector with valuable skills of use in the organisation’s work to end illegal fishing.

Through this training, The Black Fish aim to make ocean conservation accessible to everyone by giving talented people the opportunity for specialist skills and capacity building. the organisation’s projects also facilitate networking between activists involved in conservation work in different European countries and inspire and support people to raise awareness on contemporary conservation issues through education.

As a talented diver, perhaps already doing your share in ocean conservationism, you know better than anyone else how happy spotting a whale shark makes you feel. And probably close to nothing makes you more excited than that manta ray flying over your head. Seeing those tiny creatures like seahorses and shrimp, you know life under water is vulnerable and needs protection.

Because besides all the breath taking beauty of the oceans you see every day when diving, you also witness first hand the ghost fishing nets spread out as blankets of death over your favourite dive spot, and you are also the one watching when the first fishermen go out to sea to catch the fish you would like to admire under water. And isn’t there a decline in the number of turtles every year?

Tickets are available for the event in Manchester on the 22nd September from the event’s Facebook page, which you can find here (directions to Wright Robinson College can be found here).

To find out more about The Black Fish organisation and the work that they do, visit their website: www.theblackfish.org/uk.