Sitting through these meetings sometimes leaves me wondering whether any of the lawyers or bureaucrats or scientists ever think about what their decisions mean for ocean life. While it might be more diplomatic to hold off on a taking a decision to actually do something for a year or two, I wonder if they ever think of how much marine life is destroyed while they are talking? How many species are fished to the brink of extinction? How many albatrosses drown on the hooks of longliners? How many thousand year old corals or century-old fish are dragged up from the deep? How many whales, dolphins or turtles are killed because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

In New Zealand this week , we set up a display of deep-sea life, to try and bring the wonder of the deep-sea into the negotiations for a new agreement to protect it. The countries at the meeting agreed to carry on talking. They did not agree to tell their high seas bottom trawlers to stop fishing in the South Pacific until this area had been studied and rules were in place to make sure that the fishing they did was sustainable. In New York , Greenpeace and our partners from the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition set up a display showing the impacts of deep-sea bottom trawling. I stood with one delegate as he looked at pictures of ‘coral forests’ deep below the ocean and saw the variety of deep-sea life, and then the bleak and empty pictures of those same areas after they had been bottom trawled. He couldn’t believe it and commented, “they really clean them out don’t they.” Yes, they do! One of the reasons we want governments to stop talking and actually DO something to make sure those ancient coral forests survive and thrive!

As the meeting drew to a close in New York today, most countries agreed that our oceans are in big trouble. Several countries admitted that overfishing was the single biggest threat to marine life. Others raised issues like the impacts of climate change, ocean noise and pollution. Many countries recognised that destructive fishing (like high seas bottom trawling) and illegal fishing had to be dealt with urgently. Many also recognised the need to begin work on ways to set up a globally representative network of Marine Protected Areas (nature reserves at sea) – we couldn’t agree more!

It is important that states are finally recognising the need to take urgent action to protect marine life. We just have to hope that ‘urgent’, which we think means ‘get up and do something NOW’ – means the same to them! At the meeting, we provided all the delegates with copies of the latest edition of Mother Jones magazine, which is a special edition focussed on the crisis facing our oceans (and names Gorton’s, the European Union and Japan as ‘Enemies of the Oceans’). We also gave out CDs with the footage of the Esperanza’s recent expedition to the Southern Ocean, and provided more policy-related documents as well as the pictures of deep-sea by-catch that Greenpeace New Zealand had managed to get.

As the Mother Jones article says, “every form of marine life – from plankton to whales – is under unprecedented assault from humanity. The ocean gave us life: can we survive if the seas go silent?” There is no need to wait any longer and gather more information on the crisis facing our oceans. There is no need for more study or reflection, or discussion. Earlier this week during the New York meeting, we suggested that since everyone in the room was so worried about the oceans, the easiest and most direct action they could take was to visit this web site and become oceans defenders! Let’s hope they listened and started doing rather than just talking!

2006 is full of international meetings on the oceans. But talk is cheap. We expect all the talk at all the meetings to lead to strong decisions and concrete actions by states to defend our oceans. Join us in making this happen. Become an Ocean Defender. Your vote helped put your government in power. Now make sure that they hear your concern about the plight of our oceans and act to protect them now.