With the UN's International Year of the Ocean in prospect, Greenpeace kick-started the agenda with a ten-point action plan to protect the world's seas. Historic opportunities were seized during 1998 in some areas. In others, the high tide was missed when government and industry failed to turn word into deed.

As summer visitors to Lisbon's EXPO site toured the Greenpeace vessel Sirius they were invited to send their personal views to environment ministers ahead of the OSPAR ministerial conference (see also Bye bye, Brent Spar). The conference went on to agree a ban on the dumping at sea of decommissioned offshore installations, such as oil rigs, and a phasing-out of discharges of radioactive and toxic wastes into the north-east Atlantic.

Centrepiece of the Lisbon EXPO festival was the International Year of the Ocean theme. A solutions-seeking Greenpeace plan in support of the UN initiative focused on overfishing, loss of biodiversity, habitat destruction, marine pollution, and the emerging threats of climate change and genetically modified organisms.

Timely endorsement of the urgency of these issues came with the publication in September of the report of the Independent World Commission on the Oceans chaired by Mario Soares. Greenpeace endorses the report's recommendation to convene a UN conference on ocean affairs as soon as possible.

Oceans in crisis

Successes? There were others to accompany the OSPAR rulings. An EU decision to phase out driftnet fishing among member fleets before the end of 2001 follows a 15-year Greenpeace campaign in the face of illegal, indiscriminate driftnet operations in the Mediterranean Sea. Here, as many as 700 vessels, each deploying driftnets up to 12km in length, are routinely killing dolphins, whales and other marine mammals - and catching some 80 species of entargeted fish.

Elsewhere, one of the world's first international bycatch reduction agreements was concluded by twelve nations convening in La Jolla, California. The historic Eastern Pacific Ocean tuna-dolphin agreement marks an important step towards establishing a progressive commitment under international law to reduce the numbers of dolphins, sharks and other species taken as bycatch in tuna fisheries.

The southern bluefin tuna, meanwhile, remains victim of a fishing free-for-all on the high seas. In the light of persistent failure by Japan, Australia and New Zealand to agree sustainable catch quotas, Greenpeace now calls for the protection of the southern bluefin tuna under the terms of the Convention for Trade in Endangered Species.

Species and statistic species.

Other endangered species in the spotlight during 1998 included the green sea turtle - subject of active campaigns by Greenpeace against a Spanish hotel chain in Mexico, and the Cypriot authorities. Incredibly, on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary, the International Whaling Commission found itself under pressure from Norway and Japan to sanction a return to large-scale industrial whaling. Action by Greenpeace delayed the Japanese fleet's return to the Southern Ocean to hunt whales in the guise of 'scientific research'.

Japan also made efforts to resume the hunt for Bryde's whales in the north Pacific, echoing Norway's practice of pinning self-awarded minke quotas on scientific data. Meanwhile, analysis of sperm whales stranded on a Dutch beach has revealed the presence in the deep-ocean food chain of deadly brominated flame retardants used in the manufacture of computers and televisions.

On another shore, another pressing issue. Together with communities near Esmeraldas in Ecuador, Greenpeace has taken action to restore a mangrove forest cleared illegally for shrimp farming. Mangroves play a key role in sustaining the rich biodiversity of the area and the livelihoods of the people who live there. To date, shrimp farmers have cleared almost 50,000 acres of mangrove forest in the region. The local community is trying to save the remaining 2,000 acres. Such statistics speak for themselves.