Blog: Oceans

Bio Diversity Incorporated from carleton creek on Vimeo.

Carlton Creek, who submitted a video to our HSBC advert challenge, has also produced this great little film which takes the ongoing discussions about attaching monetary worth to the natural services provided by our planet and turning them on their head. It's a neat little thought experiment into what the sales pitch for a company representing all life on Earth (or 'shareholders') would be like.

Elsewhere, artist and architect Maya Lin (previous work: Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC) is working on a collaborative, multi-media and multi-space project called What Is Missing? The current website highlights species which have been lost or are severely threatened, and if nothing else hovering your mouse over the map markers and hearing a soundscape of endangered creatures is haunting.

Karli Thomas, Greenpeace oceans campaigner, writes from the IWC meeting in Morocco.

The town of Sidi R'bat on Morocco's Atlantic coast is where the biblical Jonah is said to have been vomited up by a whale. Less than 100km from that spot, something has been going on this week that is again enough to make a whale sick to the stomach.

The International Whaling Commission has been meeting this year beneath a dark cloud of scandal. As delegates descended on the city of Agadir, media headlines exposed Japan 'buying' countries to vote with them - including the accusation that airfares and accommodation for this meeting's acting chairman were paid by Japan. Hardly an auspicious start to a crucial international meeting, nor a good omen for the whales.

Next week, our governments will get together in Agadir, Morocco, to talk whales. It’s the International Whaling Commission’s annual meeting. And this year, the main topic of conversation will be the IWC itself.

In reality, this is a testing time for the whales, and in many ways we need to make sure we save them all over again. Way back in the 80s when a moratorium, or ban, on commercial whaling was agreed, many countries had already stopped whaling. As the official catch figures show, by the time the ban came into force in 1987 commercial whaling was reduced to practically zero.

Unlike these pelicans, hermit crabs are less obvious victims of the Deepwater disaster (proper crab imagery below the fold, honest) © Magan/Greenpeace

John Hocevar, team leader of the oceans campaign at Greenpeace USA, is currently in Louisiana helping with Greenpeace's response to the BP oil spill. Here's his latest report from the centre of the ever-growing disaster.

Greetings from Grand Isle, Louisiana, one of the growing number of places unlucky enough to win a "heavily oiled" classification on the government maps tracking the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Despite BP's efforts to keep it under wraps, we're here to document the impacts of the spill. The public has a right - and a responsibility - to know the true cost of our continued reliance on offshore oil, and fossil fuels in general.