Arctic Seas

Dreams and dolphins

Irene — 2005-09-24T12:33:37+01:00

Another night full of long and very clear dreams has passed. Dreams you have on ships are amazing, maybe its the motion of the sea, which starts to jog your memories. In the middle of the night I woke up and I couldn´t sense where I was. For 10 minutes I felt as though I was stuck in the interior of the earth, everything hot and moving around me and I felt really nervous. And later I dreamed I was on a very old but very fast sailing ship, out in the dark , way too fast to sail around the most beautiful blue whale, who suddenly appeared. Couldn´t think of anything else than that we might hit and hurt it... I don´t know, where the first dream came from, but I am damned sure about the origin of the second.

Hopen Island - a wall in the the middle of the nowhere

Irene — 2005-09-23T11:19:59+01:00

Isolation, wild, icy, remote, inspiring, solitude all words to describe the island of Hopen and none of them adequate to quite capture the feeling of being two miles offshore of this remote island in the Barents Sea. After riding out a storm on the open ocean over the past two days, an awe-inspiring event in itself, the Esperanza finally came into the lee of Hopen Island yesterday evening.

We need more condoms!

Irene — 2005-09-20T22:55:36+01:00

Confessions of a pirate Captain

Another day on the high seas of the arctic and another illegal fishing boat. Monday night after our team returned from the MURTOSA fishing vessel we started following another blimp on the radar: 82m long fishing vessel KERGULEN. This ship also has an interesting recent past. When we spoke to the captain he said the vessel is registered under Guinean flag, according to the SeaSearcher database the flag is Mauritania and according to the latest EU information it is under Togo flag. Quite confusing, but this is common practice with illegal ships and is called flag hopping. We found out that the owner of the ship is French with a front office in the Falkland Islands and the ships crew of 42 men are mainly Portuguese.

Action in the Barents Sea against pirate fishing

Irene — 2005-09-20T09:48:50+01:00

See video from the action (Windows Media, )

"How can we break the f**king law, when there is no f**king law", the captain of the trawler called Murtosa screamed at us as we sat on the fishing net onboard his ship.

Kristin's first trip on a Greenpeace ship

Irene — 2005-09-19T10:49:21+01:00

German journalist Kristin was invited to join the Esperanza in the Barents Sea:

I am on board of the Esperanza for the tour into the Barents as a journalist from a German diving magazine. When Stefanie Werner from Greenpeace Germany called our office like two months ago to invite somebody from the Unterwasser magazine to be on board, we where convinced from the very first second that it would be a good idea to be doing a story about the trip.

Well wishes in a bottle

Irene — 2005-09-15T15:25:15+01:00

This morning we had a nice start for the working day. After the ship clean-up duties we gathered together into the mess and Stefanie our German oceans campaigner delivered us a huge bottle filled with mysterious looking paper scrolls. Greenpeace Germanys GreenTeam, a Greenpeace activist group for children between 8-15, turned 15 years last weekend. They had a birthday celebration on a sailing ship where everyone was dressed up as pirates and they wrote messages for the crew on Esperanza and the campaign up here in Norway.

QuickTime: See the crew on the Esperanza recieve the messages

Not a tanker in sight

Irene — 2005-09-15T14:56:08+01:00

We are arriving at Kirkenes, very close to the Russian border. The sun is shining and the even though the temperature has dropped quite a bit there is still a hint of summer. So except that we have not seen a single oil tanker on our way, the sailing up here has been very good.

Screams of laughter, shouts of joy

Irene — 2005-09-13T18:58:49+01:00

The red and green coalition beat the right wing in the Norwegian elections yesterday. This should make life a whole lot better for conscientious Greenpeacers with sustainability on their minds. It was touch and go there for a while, with the left and the right taking turns being in the lead many hours into the night. Not until the very end did we dare believe that the reds and greens had really won.

The Esperanza is currently in Tromsø

Irene — 2005-09-12T11:13:36+01:00

Unfortunately I had to leave the ship. I want to thank the wonderful crew, miss you already.

Keep an eye on this blog - the team onboard will keep posting updates!

- Iréne

Daily routines while looking out for oil tankers

2005-09-09T16:25:22+01:00

The Barents Rescue 2005 is all good and well, and the emergency exercise is important, but we need to do all we can to prevent accidents from happening in the first place. One solution would be to move dangerous shipments to 50 nautical miles off the coast, instead of the current 12. Therefore the Esperanza currently patrols the coast of northern Norway, and try and keep oil tankers further out.

The North Cape 71° North

Irene — 2005-09-07T11:55:02+01:00

The northernmost little tip of Europe, the North Cape, gets a lot of visitors. People come here in winter to experience the northern light, and in the summer for the midnight sun, and ornithologists come from all over the world for the spectacular birdlife nearby at Gjesvær nature reservation. We went up there and had a chat with a few tourists.

Download Quicktime movie

The Crew

Irene — 2005-09-05T14:29:44+01:00

More to come, but here are a few of us!

Barents Rescue 2005 in realistic weather

Irene — 2005-09-05T14:03:27+01:00

Its been busy here in Honningvåg this weekend: all sorts of coastal authorities, military and rescue teams not only from Norway but also from Sweden, Finland, Russia and the United Kingdom will participate in a very big emergency rescue drill - the Barents Rescue 2005. Six ships and over 20 helicopters will be involved.

Threatened beauty

Irene — 2005-09-03T14:03:59+01:00

"To the Italian oil company that wants to drill here I want to say, quoting Monty Python: ROMANS GO HOME!"

See Martin's pictures from the island of Hjelmsøy. This fragile area is threatened by the plans for oil drilling and the lack of preparedness in case of an accident.

The Goliath oil field a conflict between plan and practice

Irene — 2005-09-01T14:42:07+01:00

We are currently in the Barents Sea, more precisely just outside the Goliath field. Goliath is the name of an offshore oilfield just northwest of North Cape. Two test drillings have previously been made by the oil company Eni and a third test drilling will now establish how much oil there really is. Today there are no oilrigs are in place, but very soon the rig Erik Raude will head in this direction.

This is happening despite the fact that the Barents is theoretically closed for drilling. I am trying to get my head around it: something smells rotten, and it is not fish.