How an oceans campaigner stays in the work when things look bleak

And why UNOC3 must commit to ban new oil and gas

The health of the ocean is inseparable from our own no matter where you live on the planet. It has always been a climate lifeline, cooling the planet, feeding millions, and holding space for wonder. But it’s also absorbing the weight of our inaction, and that toll is showing up not just in rising seas, but in rising anxiety, especially among frontline communities who depend on the ocean most.

With the UN Ocean Conference (UNOC3) on the horizon, we have a narrow window to demand real protection, not platitudes. That’s why I’m honored to share this powerful essay from ocean campaigner Nicolas Entrup. With 30+ years in marine conservation, he pulls no punches about how oil interests are undermining the very systems meant to protect our seas. He’s helping drive the #BecauseOurPlanetIsBlue campaign, a global call to ban new offshore oil and gas.

We have the power to make some noise. Please share this campaign and spread it in your networks.

Now over to Nicolas.

There are moments when history doesn’t whisper—it howls. We are in one now. Our oceans, Earth’s oldest guardians, are collapsing.

I have been working professionally as a campaigner and activist for ocean conservation for more than 30 years. This is my skill set, my training, and what I can offer in these unthinkable times. Long before the climate crisis became a mainstream headline, it was already surging through the sea. Warming, acidifying, choking on our waste, and echoing with the seismic blasts of oil exploration. They’ve buffered our planetary excess for centuries, absorbing 90% of the excess heat and nearly a third of our carbon emissions. We’ve treated our oceans as infinite, eternal, and mute. But they are not. They are breaking.

This is not just a crisis to me. It’s an elegy, and one that I feel on a deeply personal level. The line between climate and ocean collapse is no longer abstract, but has become personally indivisible. I live in central Europe, in a place not yet defined by daily survival. That distance once gave me the illusion of balance, until climate collapse touched those close to me: a dear friend and fellow ocean campaigner I had worked with for three decades lost her home, farm, and everything she’d built in a climate-driven wildfire. Then came the floods in Vienna—disasters creeping closer, that have yet spared me.

It’s disorienting to feel both helpless and lucky, but I’ve learned that trying still matters. I was born in a landlocked country, and yet my path to ocean advocacy began in the most unlikely place: a public swimming pool in Budapest. There, I saw dolphins—symbols of freedom—confined to a barren tank, forced to perform for entertainment. I was already active in animal rights, but that moment crystallized something deeper. It was all so profoundly wrong, so I mobilized experts, engaged with authorities, and within weeks, the facility was shut down. The experience became a threshold and my unexpected entry point into a lifelong commitment to protecting the ocean and its wild inhabitants. It taught me that change is possible and that activism is not only powerful, but necessary.

Though my career eventually led me into the realm of international diplomacy, I’ve never stopped showing up. I support young activists and scholars at ClimaTalk, who continue to inspire me with their brilliance, urgency, and professionalism, often working voluntarily out of sheer commitment. Their courage keeps me going. Because the truth is, every day I confront loss. The world continues to drill, even accelerating its search for new oil and gas deposits in the seabed, but I show up anyway because it’s how I stay sane, and this work is never done alone.

I want to invite you into this space. In June (9-13), world leaders will gather in Nice, France, for the 3rd United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3). And while some world leaders have already declared multilateralism as their enemy, those waving the flag for believing in collaboration to overcome an existential crisis are still puzzled by how to tackle the opposition's power. We still wait for a collective reaction, a clear commitment to leave the fossil fuel era and engage in the energy transition as being without alternatives and show measurable action. Now, they will meet in air-conditioned halls just a few hundred meters from a sea they claim to defend. The language of diplomacy will hang thick in the room—measured, careful… one might say “empty”, many of us wishing that such an assumption is proven wrong. But make no mistake: this gathering is a test. Either UNOC3 calls for a global ban on all new oil and gas exploration, or it signs the ocean’s death warrant.

For decades, the ocean has done what no treaty or politician could. It has bought us time and sequestered roughly a third of our CO₂ and buffered us from the worst. But buffers break, and this one is failing. The collapse of the ocean is not just an ecological crisis, it’s also a spiritual one. Something ancient and magnificent is being decimated before our eyes, and the silence around it—these dithering, hollow commitments—feel almost unbearable. The Zero Draft of the UNOC3 outcome document is a prime example. It gestures vaguely toward ocean protection but refuses to name the culprit: new oil and gas. There’s no accountability, no urgency. Just the soft murmur of appeasement dressed in neutral language designed to offend no one and protect nothing. A ban on new oil and gas exploration isn’t radical. It’s the floor. The bare minimum to align with the Paris Agreement, with climate science, with survival. So why won’t the Nations say it in a united form? Aren’t they the United Nations?

And yet, something is stirring. Amid the silences, a growing chorus is rising. Communities on the frontlines of ocean collapse are demanding more. Scientists, Indigenous leaders, youth activists, and coastal defenders are speaking with one voice: no more oil, no more gas. France has paused new offshore licenses. Portugal, Denmark, and Greenland are edging toward bans. Spain has taken bolder steps. The science is clear. The ethics are clear. The time is now.

As diplomats circle the drain of watered-down consensus, people everywhere are speaking with clarity. A global petition called Because our Planet is Blue is gathering signatures from every continent, demanding an end to new oil and gas exploration. Each name is a crack in the wall of silence, and each voice makes it harder for UNOC3 to look away.

Showing up may not feel like much, but know it is everything. The act of returning, of refusing to turn away, again and again, is how change begins, and is how we muster a power much stronger than despair. And conveniently, that power is what helps keep us sane while we do this often maddening work.

What’s at stake is the great breathing, watery realm beneath us, the ancient rhythms that have carried us, fed us, held us and that once lost, cannot be restored.

Please add your name. Share this petition. Let it roar in the room where the ocean’s fate is being decided.

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‘Till next time,

-Britt