I love the oceans. There, I’ve said it!
I live in Sydney so I’m always pretty close to a beach, and am lucky enough to spend quite a bit of time in the ocean. Working at Greenpeace on oceans issues, I also spend a lot of time thinking about them. It is the nature of our role to highlight the issues that affect the world around us, but every so often it’s important to just stop, and smell the sea air.
As it turns out, there are lots of other ocean lovers out there, maybe you’re one too as you clicked to see these photos?
Earlier this year we ran a photography competition with an online community of photographers, and many of the photos above are from that. Once we started posting them to our Instagram account lots of other people got in touch with their beautiful photos as well, and the project snowballed from there.
Greenpeace has always understood the importance of showing what’s happening. I really like the approach as it makes it easier to understand an issue, and has always inspired me to get involved.
As a non-violent organisation, we believe in ‘mind bombs’ that jostle all of us out of complacency and open our eyes to the bigger picture. Whether our activists are locking themselves to forest clearing machinery, or dangling from a bridge to stop an oil rig en route to destroy the Arctic, we know that if we can get the right image of the action, people will feel like they are there with us, and the passion and optimism for a better world might just go viral. For instance there are now 8m of us taking action together to move away from fossil fuels, to a bright green future with renewable energy.
These photos recharge my passion for what we have to do. It’s important to remember the beauty of what we’re striving to protect.
And, possibly even more importantly, we have to remember that over and over again, all around the world, we’re winning!
Enjoy the photos, and for a bit more inspiration, check out this short film we put together:
