whales

Today is the International Day for Biological Diversity. That’s a bit of a mouthful, but put simply it’s a day officially set aside to celebrate the world’s wealth of wildlife. For 2014 the theme is Island Biodiversity.

We know climate change is the biggest threat facing our planet, which is why it is Greenpeace’s priority campaign across the world. Today’s report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s highlights the enormous impacts and consequences climate change is having on our oceans. This must act as a wake-up call for everyone who depends on, or cares about our oceans and the vast array of life within them.

These are the most important messages from report - and they mean for our oceans.

It’s decision time today for the future of the giant mammal as a U.N. top court rules whether Japan has the right to hunt whales in the Antarctic. Australia has asked the International Court of Justice to stop Japan’s whale hunt claiming their program is not scientific but commercial, because of its large scale.

It’s Valentine’s Day. To offer you a sugar-free, non-commercialised way of celebrating here are our top ten reasons to LOVE the ocean.

Science doesn’t always get a lot of breaks, it’s constantly twisted and misrepresented in the media, and sometimes the best intentions end up being used in ways the scientists themselves would never want them to be or condone. Who’d have thought, for example, that UK universities could be used to defend commercial whaling? Yet, that's exactlly what's happening right now.