dolphins

It’s March and it's Dolphin Awareness Month! Dolphins are extremely intelligent and social animals that live in pods, can swim at a speed of up to 25 miles per hour and maybe able to dive up to 1,000 feet - as well as jump as high as 20 feet out of the water. These images document why we need to protect these magnificent creatures!

Something amazing is happening in Monterey Bay, California. The bay is a marine sanctuary, on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The bay is home to an amazing array of wildlife: everything from cute, cuddly sea otters to prehistoric pelicans, from massive kelp forests to gigantic blue whales. But the big news is that BBC is kindly bringing all of this right into your living room with a massive live TV event called Big Blue Live.

When I was little, I can vaguely remember a trip to Blair Drummond Safari Park for my birthday. This was back in the days when the world was black and white, Starburst was called Opal Fruits, and they still had dolphins in captivity in the UK. I don’t remember much, but I know we watched a dolphin ‘show’ with balls and hoops and clapping and ‘ooh-ing’.

You can’t see a dolphin in the UK doing that today. That is progress.

So I’m 'it' today, and in truth I'm behind with some blogging about the campaign anyway, so it’s about time I wrote something.

As the oceans' campaigner in the office I tend to get asked a lot of very different things in any one day – and quite frankly don't have time to deal with or consider every single oceansy thing that crosses my email box. Over 70 per cent of the planet = a lot of issues…  the issues that are variously piled up on my desk include marine reserves, whaling and over fishing.

And we can work on those with the public, our active supporters, colleagues in other countries and other groups, retailers, industry, politicians, journalists, artists, celebrities and any combination of the above. It's my job to basically do whatever it takes to make oceans campaigning happen – which can lead to very different 'typical days' in the office indeed.