Universal Currency

Smiles:  Internationally accepted and recognised the world over, regardless of language barriers and the availability of a working ATM or Western Union branch.  The value of a smile will not fluctuate at the mercy of global economic scares or due to changes in the price of a barrel of oil.  You don't need to stash a smile in your socks or even consider wearing one of those highly questionable money belts, in fact they weigh nothing and take up no space in your bag.  Smile and at the very least you will get a smile back in return, and probably a great deal of goodwill and kindness to boot.  A smile won't buy you material trappings beyond your immediate needs, but they are solid currency for a more worthwhile experience.  Always pack a smile.

• Top image:  Exchanging meticals for a bunch of bananas and a smile for a smile, Mozambique.
• Middle image:  When shooting portraits of people in traditional dress, particularly if you can't speak the language, I find that a smile will often be of great help.  Asakusa Temple, Tokyo.
• Bottom image:  Kids seem to have few opinions and preconceptions about other people and will usually react to a smile, a wave and a toot of the car horn with laughter and big friendly waves.  If I remember rightly these kids persuaded their Dad to do a lap of the block to come around for a second round.  Al Ashkharah, Oman.  Used previously to demonstrate the benefits of smiling in the Ten Tips To Take With You post.

  

In Hope...

I just walked out to the top of the headland that juts out into the sea where I live and watched the sun dip into the sea at the end of a gorgeous spring day.

I do this every now and then to remind myself how lucky I am to be able to do just this, but today I did it to have a bit of a quiet moment for the people of Japan, and thought about the terrifying footage that I watched on Friday lunchtime which is now burned onto my memory. There's ben a lot of seismic activity around the Pacific rim recently, but this is the first time that I've ever seen the devastation happening live, rather than just pictures of the aftermath.

I live on the coast, and I know waves, but I still can't fully process what I saw.

Here's hoping that the people of Japan and their rich and fascinating culture can make it through this horrendous massive natural disaster and come out the other side.

I shot these images few years ago in the Asakusa district of Tokyo, in the area around the Senso-ji Buddhist Temple.

Tokyo Steez

The streets of Tokyo throw up some pretty big polarities in the world of what people wear: throngs of sombre businessmen in sharp suits, the occasional lady in a traditional kimono and then periodic groups of young people proudly wearing the badge of whichever subculture they follow, and follow fervently.
Now I'm no sartorialist but I could hardly let this guy walk on past me without collaring him for a photo. Despite the language barrier, I think he got the idea of what I was after, waving my camera at him and pointing to the row of crazy vending machines.
I wonder where he got that jacket?

The End of the Line

“Turn your television on right this second!”
I tend to take my Dads advice, he’s generally pretty spot-on. I also tend to not watch very much TV, except for in this instance. End of the Line had its terrestrial premiere last night on Channel 4 and it was an eye opener – a documentary heralded as “An Inconvenient Truth for the oceans” it shines a light on the plight of our marine environment and just what we are doing to it. Destroying it.
If humans continue pulling fish out of the oceans for consumption at our current rates, BY 2048 THERE WILL BE NOTHING LEFT bar plankton, algae and worms. 1.2 billion humans on this planet depend on fish as the key source of protein in their diets, and furthermore in terms of not only impact upon humans, fish poo has been shown to actively absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. No more fish=no more fish poo=more CO2 and accelerated global warming and ocean acidification. These kinds of facts scare me.
Humanities current capacity for fishing far exceeds the amount of fish in the oceans. Four fold. Some more scary facts: Illegal fishing is worth $50 billion per year effectively making every other fish on your plate stolen, and of all the fish caught every year, approximately 7 billion tons (1/10 of the total world catch) goes back overboard dead because it’s by-catch. Harvesting wild fish from our oceans has become a highly industrialised, military-esque operation, hunting down every fish in the ocean until there are none left. Annually, the number of long lines laid could circle the planet 550 times, whilst the mouth of the largest purse seiner net would easily accommodate 13 747’s. It’s not really a fair fight. Many fish stocks, such as Atlantic Cod, have crashed beyond retrieval whilst others like Blue Fin Tuna are critically endangered. That doesn’t stop them showing up on menus, but can you imagine the out cry if a restaurant advertised Orang-utan steaks or fillet of White Rhino? It’s really no different.
There are solutions however, which if pressed into mass action could push that ominous 2048 date back a bit: Only buy sustainably sourced seafood bearing the Marine Stewardship Council mark or that caught in Alaska, one of the most sensitively and well managed fisheries out there. Don’t buy farmed fish because it’s a bag of crap; it takes 5kg of “other” fish to produce 1kg of salmon. That just doesn’t add up.
Pressure politicians to listen to fisheries scientists when setting catch limits; or better still to push for the creation of marine protected areas. If all of the money spent on subsidising the fishing industry was redirected to maintaining marine protected areas then they would be protecting 30% of the worlds’ oceans rather than the current 0.6%.
I’m not saying stop eating fish, perhaps just go about it in a different way, armed with a bit of knowledge and some realistic facts. I plan on catching a lot of what I eat this summer, and when I do buy fish, checking the source. I urge you to do the same.

http://www.endoftheline.com/film

Photography: Various shots from Tsukiji fish market, Tokyo Japan. This is the largest fish market on the planet and the venue for the infamous Tuna Auctions. I hit the place at 5am to get a realistic view of what goes down there.
Below that, Blue Basque boats in the harbour at Mundaka, Northern Spain, and some rusty old trawlers at dock in Portland, Victoria, Australia.