BP

So the US government is suing BP (along with a bunch of other oil spill sidekicks).  The announcement this morning sent investors running scared and wiping a cool £2.8 billion off BP's share price. Shame the wildlife don't get lawyers.

We've taken the government to the High Court in a bid to stop offshore drilling in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Our lawyers filed a claim at the Royal Courts of Justice this morning seeking to stop the issuing of new licences for deep sea drilling until the causes of the Deepwater Horizon explosion have been properly established.

Several weeks after BP announced that the leaking well was firmly capped, the Arctic Sunrise is still in the Gulf assessing the damage caused to marine life and habitats. Oceans campaigner John Hocevar is part of the investigation team and his latest blog is below. More blogs, photos and videos from the Arctic Sunrise's expedition can be found on our US website.

A couple days ago, we advanced the cause of science and conservation by throwing someone else's hundred thousand dollar piece of equipment over the side of the ship.  It sank to the bottom.

Fortunately, this was all part of the plan. The scientists we are working with, Steve Ross and Mike Rhode from University of North Carolina Wilmington and Sandra Brooke from the Marine Conservation Biology Institute and the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology, plan to come back next year to retrieve the equipment, called a benthic lander, and use it to learn how deep sea corals are surviving in a rapidly changing and heavily impacted environment.

Now that I'm out of the water, off the Esperanza and back on dry land, I've been thinking about what it takes to stop not just one oil rig but all of them.

There's no dodging the fact that the oil industry is immense. In the North sea, where we confronted Chevron, companies have spent more money on extracting oil in the region than NASA spent putting a man on the moon. In the Gulf of Mexico, where BP's Deepwater Horizon platform exploded this summer, there are over 3,500 other rigs ready to bore away at the seabed.

Everyone’s got their personal reasons for taking action. For me, deciding to jump in front of a moving drill ship was not only about protecting the environment and stopping climate change, it was also about peace. Our addiction to oil fuels conflict, corrupts governments and destroys lives.

Today BP’s got a new boss, Mr Bob Dudley.  Like anyone who starts a new job, he could do with a bit of advice.

Taking over from the gaffe-prone Tony Hayward - who headed the company during the Deepwater Horizon disaster - Bob’s hoping to draw a line under the world’s biggest oil spill and start again.

And we want to help him. We want to like BP. We believe it could be the kind of company that pioneers clean energy technology and doesn’t invest in dirty fossil fuels.  It could be a company that deserves a green sunflower as its logo.