Lesley Medic New Zealand

I work on the Rainbow Warrior as a medic/deckhand. I have been a nurse for many years, but ran away to sea rather late in life 3 years ago - a change I have not regretted for one moment.

Working for Greenpeace means that I am fortunate enough to be working with people from around the world and in many different countries. We may be involved in helping people who are struggling to stop the destruction of their local environments, or in campaigns about issues that may effect the entire planet. Unfortunately the more places I go to, the more I see how destructive we humans can be. My hope for the future is that humans will learn to respect nature and each other and recognise the interdependance that we rely on for a safe and healthy planet.

My country is about as far away from Iceland as you can get, but we are both small nations with small populations. Our countries share some geographic similarities, and New Zealand was also once a whaling nation. We became very involved in efforts to stop whaling in the southern oceans because of the threat of extinction of some species.

Now, thousands of tourists travel from all over the world to go whale watching. The reaction to seeing these huge mammals is usually one of awe and excitement. I am sure that we probably share many charactarisics besides geographc ones and it would be nice to think that another feature in common could be this exciting tourist attraction, which is currently under threat by whaling activities

-- More crew bios

-- Web log of our journey

-- Help Iceland choose whale watching over whale killing