On The Up: Peter Burling and Blair Tuke’s conservation journey and their next big project

Peter Burling sailed with Team Brunel in the 2017-18 Ocean Race. Photo / Volvo Ocean Race via Photosport

In a race around the world, Peter Burling and Blair Tuke identified a new path to follow.

A rarity for the pair throughout their professional sailing careers, the Olympic gold medallists and America’s Cup winners were competing against one another in their bid to add the Ocean Race title to their collection.

During the 2017-18 edition of the race, the pair got to see plenty of the beauty the open ocean had to offer, but also the troubles it was facing. While they competed apart, they came together to see if they could do anything with their platforms to help address it, establishing their foundation Live Ocean soon after.

“Doing the Ocean Race was the catalyst for a couple of reasons. We saw during that race the power of sport, and there were a couple of teams in the race that did great things with their platform and through a sporting event brought people around some of the bigger issues of our time,” Tuke told the Herald.

“We saw that, we also saw during the race how connected the world is with what happens in Asia or in South America or anywhere. There are no borders in the ocean.

“Those couple of things definitely kickstarted it and then we spent a year before we launched Live Ocean to really dive into what we could do with our platform we have through sport and how we can do that here in Aotearoa.”

Blair Tuke sailed with team MAPFRE in the 2017-18 edition of the Ocean Race. Photo / Photosport

For more than five years, the pair have been championing a healthy ocean through the foundation, supporting marine conservation projects and engaging partners to help drive action and awareness to protect the seas.

“It’s been an incredible journey for the last five and a bit years,” Burling said.

“Live Ocean’s [about a] healthy ocean for a healthy future, and part of that is really the excitement of the opportunity around what we could do in New Zealand.

“You’ve got a massive ocean space, we’re on the bottom of the world, so we’ve got a lot of really good things going for us, but in some ways we need to be a lot better than we are.

“We need to continue to look after it, and we, travelling around the world, see so much devastation in so many beautiful places that we’re really wanting to be part of a positive change for the oceans in New Zealand.”

The pair have set their sights on their next project, looking to bring more attention to the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill. The proposed bill plans to introduce 19 new marine protection areas in the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana, to help address environmental decline because of human activities in the area, but has stalled after two readings.

In a joint effort between Live Ocean and the Black Foils New Zealand SailGP Team, sport and conservation will come together with their Foil4TheGulf event – where up to 200 foilers are expected to take to the water at the Royal Akarana Yacht Club on May 24.

“We’ve got a real problem in New Zealand that we as a whole and our attitudes towards how we treat the oceans is wrong or misaligned, in my opinion, where we take a lot of it for granted,” Tuke said.

“We think we’re better than we are, so there’s a huge amount we can do. The ocean is absolutely vital for us to have a healthy future here in Aotearoa and for the world, so let’s start treating with that respect.”

The event falls just before Burling, Tuke and the Black Foils head back to the United States for the next SailGP event in New York in early June.

The team have had an extended break after the league’s decision to cancel the scheduled regatta in Brazil in April after finding an issue with some of the wingsails in the 12-boat fleet.

That decision came after the wingsail on the Australian boat collapsed during racing in San Francisco.

“I think everyone in SailGP’s happy with the decision. The boats were in America about to get shipped out when they made the call and to be able to do a complete check and overhaul on the whole fleet and be back ready to go for New York, something that’s incredibly exciting,” Burling said.

“With what they found in the post-mortem of the Australian incident, with a bonding issue in the sheer web of that wing, it’s something that they really wanted to get ahead of and make sure those kinds of things can’t happen.

“It’s a really positive step. Obviously it’s a shame to miss Rio, but [it’s a] really positive step for the league.”

Christopher Reive joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.