I wouldn't have thought it possible to further elevate the standing Darwin and his work have, but by trawling through reams of correspondence and notebooks, Desmond and Moore have done just that.

But when you go to a tropical rainforest, it's easy to find new insects, and when you go to the deep sea and pull up a trawl, 90% of what you get can be undiscovered species.

Interestingly, however, they were not protesting against the ban. Most are happy to concede that Hong Kong waters are so overfished that trawling is no longer an economically viable existence.

Vessels targeted as a result of this kind of intelligence included the Greek cargo ship Titan, the Turkish merchant ship Karagol and the Spanish trawler Felipe Ruano.

Rather, the captain, 41, had returned from 18 days in detention in Japan after his trawler collided with Japanese Coast Guard boats patrolling waters near rocky isles claimed by both China and Japan.