In passing the 'Anadarko Amendment' yesterday the Government once again perverted the New Zealand Story by putting big business ahead of New Zealanders.

It is a toady legislation that criminalises crucial aspects of protesting at sea; it's an affront to New Zealand’s democracy and to our long held right and proud tradition of peaceful protest at sea. It is obviously designed to placate foreign oil companies nervous about coming to New Zealand after seeing the rough ride given to Petrobas off the East Cape, but it’s backfired. It’s been so badly done and is so unpopular that it’s really just demonstrated to big foreign oil companies that deep sea drilling in New Zealand is not a safe bet.

New Zealand once sent a cabinet minister with the NZ Navy aboard the HMNZS Otago and the HMNZS Cante... Read more >

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More detail on the Horizon Research polling here. Read more >

TAKE ACTION: Sign the joint statement here.

As we sailed out of Wellington through the Cook Strait on the Rainbow Warrior a few days ago, all of a sudden we were met by hundreds of dolphins. And they kept arriving until we were completely surrounded.

I was totally blown away and even the most experienced seafarers among us were amazed.

And it felt significant because at the time we were very close to the Pegasus Basin where Texan oil company Anadarko wants to carry out high risk deep sea oil drilling.

We had just been to the Auckland Islands to draw people’s attention to what is at stake if we allow deep sea oil drilling to proceed and that was a profound experience. But it felt almost as if this enormous pod of dolphins had then arrived to remind us that in fact all around NZ we have an astonishingly rich ecology that is too precio... Read more >

We’ve been at anchor in Port Ross at the northern end of Auckland Island for two days now. For most of that time our documentary team has been off the ship walking the islands or puttering around the coast in a small inflatable boat. They’ve been to Enderby Island, Rose Island and the main Auckland Island.

The rest of us have been mostly ship-bound but we did get the opportunity to go to the old Hardwicke Settlement briefly yesterday, and today walked the track from Sandy Bay up to the lookout and back. It was A M A Z I N G – a word that is suffering some serious over-use here at the moment. This is among the wildest places on Earth. Some of the islands are close to pristine as you can get and being here feels a little like we’ve stepped into Jurassic Park.

It’s the middle of summer -... Read more >

Today we passed to the east of Stewart Island and continued sailing south towards an area of sea known to be amongst the wildest on the planet. So far it’s been relatively calm, which is a relief, but also, if dare I say so, slightly disappointing. I’ve heard tales of 10 metre swells and part of me wants to feel what that’s like!

When we think of New Zealand we mainly think of the two or three biggest islands but there is more to New Zealand than meets the eye. If you look at this region on a map you can see a line of small islands running in a long curve starting 600 kms south of Stewart Island, starting with Campbell Island running through the Auckland Islands and up to the Chatham Islands. This line of islands is in fact the peaks of the highest mountains of the sunken continent known... Read more >