Our largest and fastest ship, Esperanza, left Auckland this morning on its way to the sanctuary to begin searching for the whaling fleet.

In the Southern Ocean the ship's crew will stay as long as they can amonst the icebergs in the freezing waters of Antarctica.  They will help the whales escape the hunt by putting themselves between the whales and the harpoon.

This year's expedition leader is New Zealander Karli Thomas.  Karli has a special affinity with whales as she often was out helping save beached whales on Farewell Spit as a child.

Last year over 800 whales died for profit. Greenpeace confronted the whale hunters in the Southern Ocean, saving 82 whales from being killed. We showed  the world the brutality of whaling and the through public pressure forced corporations out of the whaling business.

This year, the crew will be carrying out new tactics – many designed by our supporters via the IGO community website. You don't have to be on the ship to help save whales!

While our crew braves the Southern Ocean we will also be focusing on engaging the large number of people in Japan who do not support whaling in the sanctuary starting with 'Whale Love Wagon' - our new internet television show!

Spanish boy meets Japanese girl - Ivan and Yuki hit the road and tour Japan in the "Whale Love Wagon", in search of true love - for the planet, and for whales! They're going to have a whale of a time.

"I've loved Japanese culture since my childhood," says Ivan, "I want to learn more about whales and Japanese culture."

Yuki adds, "I want to deepen my knowledge about whales and express my feelings in my art-work".

You can tune in at www.whalelove.org

Read the crew's ship blog

OK, it's a totally cool phone, but still, it's a phone. We wanted an industrial revolution. One that would address the problem of all the e-waste piling up in China and India.

Thousands of participants in the Green my Apple campaign have been dropping some pretty big hints to Apple about what they wanted announced at Macworld.

They've been writing to Steve, blogging, creating graphics and ads, t-shirts and buttons, photographing themselves hugging their macs.

For our part, we bathed the Apple store in San Francisco in green light and put our cardboard Mac Guy (star of our alternative Mac Ad) on tour at the conference, and helped a small squad of Green Apple volunteers with the task of handing out leaflets about the Green my Apple campaign. It was popular stuff. They ran out of leaflets.  

They were spreading the word about how much more Apple could do than the little that US law requires, which has earned them a pat on the head from the Bush Administration's Environmental Protection Agency.

We even presented Steve with a suggested speech, which was among the top  YouTube videos viewed on the day of Steve's keynote.



But when it came time for the real speech, we didn't even get a measly Keynote slide about Apple's continued use of brominated fire retardants, PVC, and stuff that other computer manufactures have already agreed to phase out.

Like Dell.

While Steve Jobs was studiously ignoring everyone's pleas to make Apple eco-friendly, Michael Dell of Dell computers was doing what Steve should be doing: leading. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, (a poor cousin to the grandeur which is Macworld) Dell said:

"I challenge every PC maker to join us in providing free recycling for every customer in every country... all the time -- no exceptions."  

Now that's the kind of different thinking we're asking for with the Green my Apple campaign. Steve, he's stealing your moves!

So if you love Apple and you want to buy iPods and iPhones and Macs that aren't going to poison kids in Asia and Africa when they reach the end of their lives, join the campaign to get Steve to do the right thing.