“Sailing on the Solent was awesome, but our racing … not quite perfect,” says Blair Tuke, co-chief executive of the Black Foils, New Zealand’s SailGP team, after finishing fifth at last month’s Great Britain Sail Grand Prix. It was only the team’s second competitive outing of the season after the boat had to be “pretty much rebuilt” following a big crash in Auckland in February, which forced them to miss four races.
But the team’s work off the water hasn’t stopped in the boatyard. Before the race in Portsmouth, which coincided with the beginning of National Marine Week in the UK, the Black Foils were awarded the Better Planet award in SailGP’s Impact League that rewards teams for environmental and social impact alongside racing.
The team won the award after Live Ocean – the marine conservation foundation Tuke founded with Black Foils co-chief Peter Burling – supported the Swim4TheOcean campaign. This saw the ultramarathon swimmer Jono Ridler complete an unprecedented 1,367km staged swim down the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island after 90 days and 468 hours in the water. Tuke describes Ridler’s swim as “one of the greatest endurance feats of all time”.
Some 5,000 people gathered in Wellington to give Ridler a hero’s welcome in April, many walking with him to parliament where he delivered a petition with 73,647 signatures demanding an end to bottom trawling in New Zealand, a destructive fishing practice dragging weighted nets across the seabed.
New Zealand is the only country that still bottom trawls seamounts in the South Pacific ocean, underwater mountains that are among the ocean’s most productive and ecologically important habitats. Research shows that bottom trawling causes devastating damage to seamount ecosystems.
Polling commissioned by WWF-New Zealand and published in April found that 47% of New Zealanders identify bottom trawling as the greatest threat to the marine environment, with 90% supporting limiting the practice. In the UK, the government outlined plans in June 2025 to ban bottom trawling in 41 Marine Protected Areas, but rejected an outright ban in September 2025.
“Single trawls can destroy corals and crustaceans that have taken hundreds or thousands of years to grow and you can destroy them in minutes,” says Tuke.
After witnessing ocean degradation while competing around the world with Burling, becoming 2016 Olympic gold medallists and 2017 America’s Cup champions in the process, Tuke says the duo began Live Ocean in 2019 after realising “the power of sport” and wanting to compete for more than just winning races. The 37-year-old describes his passion for the ocean as “natural”, rooted in coming from a country that is guardian to the fourth-largest ocean space on the planet.
Tuke has “pushed really hard” over the past two years to make Swim4TheOcean happen because he believed in its power to create genuine change. Previous Live Ocean projects, such as protecting the Antipodean albatross, have proved “the power of what you can do by pulling all levers to create change”.
Ridler’s route down the coast included multiple stopovers, creating opportunities to connect with coastal communities and share the mission’s message. “People love following people doing hard stuff,” says Tuke, who swam a couple of support legs alongside Ridler.
The 35-year-old swimmer’s endurance and conviction carried an emotional charge that science and policy alone cannot match, making tens of thousands not only feel something about an invisible crisis happening beneath the ocean’s surface, but also do something about it by signing the petition and moving bottom trawling into New Zealand’s national conversation.
SailGP Impact League judges praised the Black Foils for their advocacy aspect of the campaign, along with its community and political elements. But while the Impact League is designed to spur teams into social and environmental-centred action, Tuke says the Black Foils “look where we have the most impact” first before thinking about the Impact League.
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Every SailGP team has an ocean conservation charity partner, but what makes the Black Foils unique is Tuke and Burling are at the helm of both. “Live Ocean is in our DNA,” the former says. “With Peter and I, we’re wearing both hats the whole time.”
Despite all the momentum generated by Ridler to end bottom trawling in New Zealand, the country’s government recently renewed a permit for a vessel to continue bottom trawling seamounts. Tuke explains these permits are issued on a yearly basis and the process to grant them was already underway as Ridler’s swim gained momentum.
On the back of the decision, Live Ocean has called for new trawling permits on seamounts to be banned – which Tuke says “is the easiest place to start” – fully protected New Zealand seamounts by 2027, and a government-led transition to move the fishing industry away from bottom trawling entirely.
New Zealand’s prime minister Christopher Luxon argued the environmental impacts of bottom trawling need to be balanced with its economic benefits, but deep ocean seamount trawling represents less than 7% of New Zealand’s deepwater fisheries exports.
Tuke believes the general election in November will be influential for the future of marine protection in New Zealand. Despite the recent permit setback, continuing the Swim4TheOcean campaign remains a chief focus alongside regaining momentum on the water during SailGP’s European swing: “We are committed to seeing it through and getting policy change in New Zealand,” he says. “You don’t want to just stop now with the work half done.”
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