oceans

A fifty year old British doctor has been imprisoned indefinitely in Sweden after she took part in a peaceful protest against an oil dumping vessel in the Baltic Sea. Her plight has outraged British environmentalists, who will hold a demonstration outside the Swedish embassy in London later this afternoon (Thursday).

Liz Rickman has been told she will be kept in jail until trial, a date for which has not been set. She is being held with Kristina Petersen, a 27 year old student from Germany. Neither has been charged with a crime, but they are being detained on suspicion of aggravated trespass (1). Both women took part in a peaceful protest against a vessel which had previously been caught dumping oil into the Baltic Sea, which is illegal under Swedish law (2). Yet while the owners and operators of the vessel walked free from court, both Liz and Kristina have spent the last week in police cells and have been told they would remain there until a trial, though no date would be given for the court case.

In spite of nearly four decades of protection Antarctic blue whales show little sign of recovery, according to the latest science from the International Whaling Commission (IWC). The worrying new findings were released on the first day of the annual International Whaling Commission conference in Shimonoseki, Japan, where the worldwide ban on commercial whaling is hanging in the balance.

Worldwide condemnation of Japan's "scientific" whaling began this week in the countdown to the next International Whaling Commission meeting in Shimonoseki, Japan. Greenpeace activists from Argentina to the UK gathered at Japanese embassies to deliver their protests in the form of whale meat boxes, petitions, letters, postcards, e-mails and faxes. Copied from the originals used by the Japanese whaling fleet , the boxes highlight the commercial reality of so-called "scientific" whaling.