The New York Times

Yes, we are a fashion and technology blog, but every now and then we come across a story that cannot be missed. Recently we told you about the impressive Adidas sneakers made from ocean plastics and gillnets used for illegal fishing. The sneakers were created through a partnership with Parley For The Oceans. Well it turns out Parley For The Oceans has a few partnerships of their own including one with Sea Shepherd. As governments do less and less to go after the people harming our oceans, the Sea Shepherd organization uses private money to bring them to justice, focusing on the worst offenders.

Two of Sea Shepherd’s ships were responsible for the 110 day, 10,000 nautical mile chase that produced the approximately 75km of gillnets in-part used in the Adidas sneaker. They were in pursuit of the Thunder, the most egregious out of the five most notorious illegal fishing boats in the world. Despite being banned since 2006 from deep sea fishing in regions of the globe, the Thunder has sold an estimated $76 million in illegally caught fish over the past decade. Parley, for its part, is working to find new uses for materials such as the gillnets so that there is more money to be made selling them to be repurposed than on the black market, where the nets will inevitably end up being used again.

Please do yourself a favor and read The New York Times’ account of the incredible pursuit that helped lead to the creation of the Adidas x Parley sneaker.