ships

Sim from the USA, who is currently on board our ship the Esperanza, writes...

I’ve been aboard the Esperanza for several days now. Having made it through the humbling experience of being utterly incapacitated by seasickness (not a pleasant experience, lemme tell you), I've started to get my feet under me and am able to help out with the day to day workings of the ship.

Loading and stowing the gear for our expedition, helping oil the cable on one of the ship's three cranes, and getting into the rhythm of morning cleaning rotation have all given me a chance to get involved with the crew as well as our campaign team. As I've found most places, putting in your time cleaning seems central to making friends out here.

I’m on the Greenpeace’s ship Esperanza and we're leaving London today. I can’t tell you where we’re going yet, but I can tell you that we are off to confront the oil industry’s reckless search for the last drops of oil on the planet.

We've also released a map that features some of the most dangerous drilling sites in the world.

As climate change causes the Arctic sea ice to recede, our ship Esperanza has sailed north of Svalbard to survey the poorly understood Arctic Ocean seabed. On the surface, the crew are observing and recording the diverse wildlife that has adapted to survive in this unique and harsh environment. Beneath the waves we are using a remote operated vehicle built and operated by top cameraman Gavin Newman to record the life on the sea bed in fine detail.

Greenpeace is calling for the area of the Arctic Ocean historically protected year round by sea ice to be closed to all industrial activity, including destructive fishing. Read more about the Arctic Under Pressure expedition.

The crews of the Arctic Sunrise and the Rainbow Warrior have once more come to the aid of Atlantic bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean. Although the fishing season has ended early because the quotas have been reached, there are still large cages out there filled with fish caught over the past couple of weeks. These cages are bound for tuna 'ranches', where the fish will be kept and fattened up, before being slaughtered.

Yesterday afternoon our activists again tried to free the endangered tuna from one of these cages.

Earlier today, the Greenpeace team in the Mediterranean made another attempt to free bluefin tuna caught by the purse-seine fishing vessels. The good news is nobody got hurt this time, but the bad news is that - despite a brilliant effort - they weren't able to release any tuna.

As you can see in the slideshow above, the Arctic Sunrise got close to a Tunisian tugboat towing a net cage, into which caught tuna are transferred and towed to a tuna 'ranch' where they're fattened up ready for slaughter. Lowering a cutting grapple from the deck of the Sunrise, activists tried to cut through the netting; meanwhile, the towing rope between the tug and the cage was cut by the crew of an inflatable.

Unfortunately, the fishing crews reacted quickly, launching their own inflatable and managing to put guards on the cage. So no bluefin tuna freed this time but the fishing season still has a week to go...

Activists are pulled from the sea as one of our inflatables sinks © Parsons/Greenpeace

Some disturbing news is coming in from the Mediterranean where, for the past two weeks, the Rainbow Warrior and the Arctic Sunrise have been waiting for the bluefin tuna fishing season to begin. As Willie (who's on board the Arctic Sunrise) reported earlier in the week, they've been waiting along with the fishing fleet for the bad weather to subside and the tuna to arrive.

It's been a long, frustrating wait for the crew but finally, this afternoon the waiting was over. Having found a fishing vessel - the Jean Marie Christian 6 - towing a purse-seine net, both ships launched inflatables with the intention of submerging one side of the net to free the tuna trapped within, but the crews of other fishing vessels intervened in a manner which can only be described as the direct opposite of peaceful and proportional.

One of the UK activists has been injured by (and I'm wincing as I type) a grappling hook through the leg. He's being evacuated to hospital but I'm told he'll be okay. We've also lost two inflatables which were slashed with knives then sunk when the fishing vessels ran over them.

A difficult start then but our two ships in the Med are going to keep taking action to shut down the bluefin fishing operations.

More updates soon.

An ex-bluefin tuna found during the Rainbow Warrior's previous visit to the Mediterranean in 2007 © Greenpeace/Care

Imagine you are an Atlantic bluefin tuna. You've been out at sea most of the year in cooler waters, feeding away and generally getting on with being a big ol' fish at the top of your food chain. You have not a care in the world, save the occasional orca or shark scare.

Then spring is sprung, and the urge takes you. Forces you don't really understand compel you to head back to warmer waters, and a certain key place, sacred to you bluefin. The bluefin equivalent of a romantic dinner and some subdued lighting is a sheltered warm sea, and conditions have to be perfect, or it ain't happening. But even that's not enough. Because of the, er, messy, way most fish reproduce, they congregate together, and only release sperm and eggs when the time and the temperature is right: 23 degrees Celsius. It's the perfect temperature for a bluefin love-in.

The Rainbow Warrior anchored near Kingsnorth power station during last year's UK visit

Shiver me timbers and other nautical cliches. Greenpeace's flagship Rainbow Warrior is currently on her way to the UK. She and her crew are en route to Copenhagen for the UN climate conference next month, but she'll be harbouring in London and Edinburgh over the next couple of weeks and her gangplanks will be lowered for anyone who wants to visit.