Don’t touch my bottom

No one should ever touch anyone’s bottom without permission. 

It’s just not right.

And the same should be said for the bottom of the sea. At the third UN Ocean Conference in Nice (UNOC 2025) bottoms were top of the agenda – all the marine world was heading to Nice and the world’s largest screen print was travelling to greet them. But what’s the UNOC 2025 I hear you ask (another COP out)? 

Here’s a bit of context. 

UNOC 2025 is the third Ocean Conference. The conference happens once every two years, and is part of ‘The Ocean decade’. An initiative by the UN to focus member states on the degradation of the Ocean. In their own words: 

“The ocean is fundamental to life on our planet and to our future. The ocean is an important source of the planet’s biodiversity and plays a vital role in the climate system and water cycle. The ocean provides a range of ecosystem services, supplies us with oxygen to breathe, contributes to food security, nutrition and decent jobs and livelihoods, acts as a sink and reservoir of greenhouse gases and protects biodiversity, provides a means for maritime transportation, including for global trade, forms an important part of our natural and cultural heritage and plays an essential role in sustainable development, a sustainable ocean-based economy and poverty eradication.”

The focus of UNOC 2025 was biodiversity and poverty, and the French State and in particular President Macron, wanted to make sure France appeared as THE Ocean saviour. 

And this is where bottoms come in. 

Who are Ocean Rebellion?

Ocean Rebellion demands a fishing reduction of 80%. 

This 80% amount means no industrial fishing. 

The most maddening thing about bottom trawling (among the most destructive industrial fishing methods) is that without subsidies, explicit and implicit, it isn’t profitable. European governments spend €1.3 billion a year subsidising this disaster. It spends an even larger amount subsidising all the other methods of industrial fishing. 

OR is an artist collective with small crews in several EU countries. We work separately and together to define targets and moments to deliver media savvy ‘art bombs’. These ‘art bombs’ use the media’s hunger for spectacular photos and film to join the dots between ocean harms and spotlight the people and institutions causing the harms. Photos and footage of OR interventions appear on newswires everywhere and pop up over and over again in articles. 

In late 2024 Ocean Rebellion (OR) began work on a series of performative interventions with NGOs. For UNOC 2025 OR’s focus was ‘bottoms’. Even in November there was a lot of excitement about a forthcoming documentary narrated by David Attenborough. Part of this documentary contained the first ever filming of bottom trawling.

When UNOC 2025 arrived we were ready to go. Our logistics included three vans packed with props and posters, night buses, trains and 15 crew members arriving at different times to different locations in Nice. 

Before we’d even left our homes our discussions with local police and officials meant our key performances were banned. They knew we had a ‘huge net’ and we were planning to deploy it before UNOC 2025 set sail.

As the saying goes: never ask permission, always ask forgiveness. 

Or, as OR prefers: ask permission to create confusion.

And so it begins – Saturday, two days before UNOC 2025

OR’s itinerary for Nice began with an official workshop, delivered in ‘La Baleine’, the civil society space or ‘Green Zone’ where UNOC 2025 met the public with a whirlwind of corporate nonsense and a tiny ‘Ocean Basecamp’ space reserved for Marine NGOs – which is where OR delivered its print and prop making workshop. 

The workshop was interrupted when two representatives of the French State demanded we remove anything containing the slogan ‘MACRON ❤️ TRAWLING’ from the ‘Green Zone’. This included our most well-used printing block which had to be taken from the hands of eager kids (they loved the heart). It also confirmed what we already knew: the authorities were desperate to control every part of UNOC 2025 and every part of Nice.

It’s worth stating here how much security was present. Before entering the ‘Green Zone’ you were checked once by Gendamerie and again by the venue security. The road outside was closed and a temporary one way system was in operation. 

On the evening of its workshop OR was planning to deliver its first and biggest intervention – if it was a success we would have an easier time convincing press lenses to attend anything else we did.

We knew there was a heavy police and French Intelligence presence, but we weren’t quite prepared for how heavy.

Our first major intervention was scheduled to happen sometime after or during the ‘Blue March’. The March, originally planned to weave through the streets of Nice but now confined to 1km of La Promenade Des Anglais by local authorities, began with an ‘officially approved’ earsplitting heavy metal set from our Netherlands based crew ‘The Seabed Slayers’. 

A banner made by OR led the March and, hidden behind it riding on a dolly, was the world’s largest screenprint – the ‘bottom trawling net’ banned from Nice. As we marched plain clothes Police poked inside the rubble bag containing the net but they could only see folded fabric. They looked confused as we continued to march towards Plage du Centenaire. 

And then we revealed it. 

The rubble bag acted like a magic bag. 

With calls of ‘Allez Allez’ to bewildered onlookers the fabric net opened up and quickly expanded, via the many hands who joined us, across and along the Promenade Des Anglais and, thanks to the careful folding and deployment design by ORs large banner specialist Bridget, when the Gendarmes finally caught on to what was happening they could only catch its end and try to arrest it – the net was out of the bag.

The fabric of death

The fabric screen print is the world’s largest screenprint. It is hand crafted and comprises over 1,000 individual screen prints. 

But it isn’t crafted to break world records. 

Its length represents the 150 metre width of the jaws of a bottom trawling net. The depth of a bottom trawling net is 1.5 kilometres, a distance so long it would take us 140 days to print it – a bottom trawling net is so large 10 Jumbo jets can fit inside. 

These huge bottom trawling nets are weighted and dragged across the seabed destroying corals, seaweed and catching any marine life in their path. This means countless sea turtles, dolphins and angler fish suffocated by the greed of EU industrial fisheries, under the protection of EU leaders, and then just thrown overboard. This is 93% of all discarded dead and dying marine life in the EU. Once bottom trawling is history, discards will almost end.

The work was underway, French TV and the press wires wanted to know what we were doing next, our net and its rescue from arrest had become a ‘moment’. 

Macron ❤️ Trawling

The crew arrived at our next location at 10:00hrs the following day. As we walked down to the beach, essential to ensure the Hotel Negresco was in the background, we were already under surveillance. By the time we’d donned our costumes – a big-headed Macron dressed as a waiter, Captain Birds Eye and three fish-headed industrial fishers – the Gendarmerie outnumbered us three to one. They wanted our IDs, they told us we couldn’t be there, but, crucially, they didn’t try to arrest or touch us in any way – they seemed confused – perfect!

The performance was a call for France’s President Macron – the conference host and second largest maritime power in the world to listen to science and increase the protection and quantity of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). 

The name ‘Marine Protected Areas’ sounds like an area is protected, right? But this often isn’t true. Approximately one quarter (27.1% in 2024 compared to 26.7% in 2023) of trawling in Europe still takes place within marine areas that are supposed to be ‘protected’. This includes bottom trawling which decimates marine ecosystems. What’s more, we knew Macron would be claiming the Polynesian effort to protect its marine environments as his own, using France’s colonial past as a cover for his own lack of effort. 

Utter shite.

Another Ocean is possible

Why are EU taxpayers funding a fishing industry which is destroying their coastal waters? 

The answer is simple, as Prof. Chris Armstrong explains in this article: policy making has been captured by a ‘narrow economic elite’ who are only interested in extracting as much as they can from the Ocean as quickly as they can. If the same subsidies and support were given to small-scale fishers, in terms of money and easy to understand policies, the EU would help both its coastal waters and its coastal communities to flourish.

Industrial fishing has declared war on fish and is winning. 

The Ocean is so depleted that small fishing communities are on the edge of survival and areas of former plenty are now empty. Over 100 million people rely on inshore subsistence and small-scale artisanal fishing for their daily food and livelihood − often using the same waters targeted by EU trawlers. It really is a no-brainer to end industrial fishing. If fishing is decreased by 80% EU wide we will simultaneously restore our seas and help coastal communities by reinvigorating traditional fishing methods and rewarding Ocean care – what’s more all of this can start by redirecting existing subsidies.

Petite Navire

The seafront was becoming a little tricky for us so, in the evening after our Macron intervention (one day before the opening of UNOC 2025 and on ‘World Ocean Day’), we headed into central Nice to visit a Monoprix supermarket. 

OR loves to change tack. After all, our work joins the dots between Ocean harms. 

The Monoprix scene is a retelling of a French nursery rhyme. In the rhyme the ‘Petit Navire’ is saved from starvation by fish leaping from the sea. In our tale there is no nursery ending, instead the crew of the ‘small ship’ dies a horrible death and is entombed in a giant tuna can – the end product of the supply chain the poor seafarer was enslaved in by unscrupulous fisheries, fisheries which form part of the worldwide supply chain for tinned tuna.

For years, European tuna brands like Petit Navire, owned and operated by global tuna giant Thai Union who also own John West, have sold their tuna as ‘sustainable’ by using the Blue Tick mark of trust brand, the Marine Stewardship Council, or MSC.

In recent years however, evidence has emerged of significant cases of forced labour in MSC fisheries. 

Yet, the MSC does not care. 

They casually wash their hands of this problem by saying that their “main mission is environmental” and that their “ecolabel does not make claims about social conditions”. In effect the MSC are saying: ‘Hey, we think it’s not a problem when a can of Petit Navire (or John West) tuna sold to you by Monoprix (or Tesco) is certified by us as sustainable – EVEN IF IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN CAUGHT BY A CHILD SLAVE!’

In an official statement French Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Emma Fourreau, said: 

“The ocean today is the scene of invisible and hidden tragedies. Among them is modern slavery on industrial fishing vessels. European companies like Petit Navire are complicit by selling fish produced by forced labor. The MSC label and Monoprix must stop supporting this anti-social bluewashing. On the eve of the United Nations Ocean Conference, it is high time to remind everyone that human rights also apply at sea.”

Later in the week the MSC were caught out at their press conference when the press questioned them about why they didn’t consider forced labour as ‘unsustainable’. The MSC had no answer. 

Bathing Beauties

 The first day of the conference was finally underway. 

By now (unknown to us at the time) we’d appeared on French News Channels several times. People clapped for our performers as they left the old town and promenaded along the seafront dressed as Victorian bathers – our very own ‘Nice Mermaids’. It was a hot day and an early morning dip outside the Hotel Negresco seemed like a wonderful idea.

We were met on the beach by France 5 TV but no Police – they were busy escorting dignitaries to and from the ‘Blue Zone’, the bit of UNOC you can only access with a pass. 

The ‘Nice Mermaids’ are a nod to our typhoid stricken past. Their costumes look bright and cheerful but their faces are deathly pale. Which isn’t a surprise when you consider how many cruise ships are operating in the Med and how much raw sewage they discharge into it. On average one billion gallons or 12,500,000 bath tubs or 1,534 Olympic swimming pools of untreated shit is dumped in the Ocean by cruise ships every year. And that’s on top of the rubbish they dump – what a shitshow.

No wonder our bathers were vomiting after their dip.

A cock in a sock

At the same time as our bathers were taking a dip our dutch band ‘The Seabed Slayers’ were setting up on the beach to play a final farewell to Nice.

We joined them just as the flares went off and the Police whistles blew. 

At first the local police thought the band was a protest by Greenpeace, who were previously denied access to the beach for their ‘deep sea mining vehicle’. When they were convinced of the band's identity (we played them some of the awful music) the Municipal Police still insisted on interrogating the band. 

Two band members, SeaWeed and FishStixx (with the sock still on his member), were ushered into a police wagon and whizzed off to the station. 

The Seabed Slayers 

The Seabed Slayers are concerned about the whole seabed and were formed from the infamous ‘Polymetallic Nodules’ – Ocean Rebellion’s Deep Sea Mining (DSM) heavy metal band who have thrilled car parks and conferences across the DSM world. 

And, as you know, the seabed is the largest ecosystem on Earth and it is threatened by industry on all fronts. Only recently Donald Trump declared war on the deep by restarting the Deep Sea Mining gold rush and reinvigorating the failing Gerard Barron and his ponzi scheme ‘The Metals Company’. Bottom trawling is just the same, it’s an industry focussed on extraction with no care for the harm it is doing. 

But what happens when the seabed is stripped bare? 

After all, the seabed is the largest carbon capture sink on Earth and the Ocean gives us every second breath we take – can they (and us) really manage without that?

After three hours both band members were released, FishStixx is charged with ‘sexual exposure’ but won’t have to defend himself, the verdict will be delivered without him – which is a relief, Nice is a long way from Amsterdam!

The British seaside visits Nice

By now two of our three apartments were under constant surveillance. 

The police were intercepting us whenever we moved with kit, IDs were constantly demanded and the police were upset none of us were flagged on their system. We were told we could no longer visit the beach with anything more than a towel but we could use the main square. We headed there where we’d be met with a van from our unsurveilled location carrying more kit.  

At the square we created a British Seaside scene. We had two sea side boards, both relating to earlier interventions and our special UN International Maritime Organisation (IMO) ‘Liquified Natural Gas’ puppet show.

The show, using traditional ‘Punch and Judy’ staging, tells a new tale of how Punch, now a fossil fuel CEO, has issues hiding methane spillages in his Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) supply chain, a chain that leaks methane all the way from its extraction to the ships it is used in. Punch has “got rid of nagging ol’ Judy” and replaced her with more pliable ‘Scrubby’ a Greenwashing Sponge who is an expert liar and always at hand to help ensure LNG appears to be the fossil fuel for ‘The Future of Shipping’. 

In reality the use of LNG is increasing with hundreds of ships being built worldwide, and, due to lobbying from the fossil fuel and shipping industry, the UN IMO is considering exempting LNG from planned carbon taxes on shipping. 

This will be a disaster. 

LNG is twenty times more climate warming in the near term than CO2. Studies of LNG supply chains reveal links to increased cancer rates near processing plants and statistics show it is 33 times more polluting than coal.

Champions of LNG (like Dale Vince) claim biomethane will resolve these issues but biomethane still leaks methane across its supply-chain, plus its use is so tiny it barely reaches 2% worldwide. 

Biomethane is not the answer – we cannot continue business as usual, only a radical reduction in consumerism will deliver the necessary reduction in shipping. Which is why the shipping and fossil fuel industries are so intent on controlling the narrative via lobbying groups like Sea-LNG.org or any other body they can buy.

Adieu Nice

We had two final surprises for UNOC 2025 before we left Nice.

First we had to revisit the ‘Green Zone’ and re-state our trawling message. We couldn’t let them off the hook. We were lucky Carola Rackete was in town. Carola happily agreed to enter the ‘Green Zone’ wearing the banned message. See the Reel here.

Next we wanted to have some fun with our version of Jacques Cousteau, after all, June 11 was his birthday. 

Like Carola the day before, ‘our Jacques’ approached the ‘Green Zone’ where he was met with Gendarmerie who firmly denied him access and tried to take the posters he was carrying. After a short conversation ‘our Jacques’ was informed he must leave the confines of Nice NOW or be arrested.

It was time to go. 

You may wonder why the police reacted so harshly to ‘our Jacques’. It might have been what we did the night before.

After being ‘banned from the seafront’ a group of us smuggled our Macron big-head back down to the beach for ‘one last shoot’. The time of the shoot coincided with an interview Macron was doing with French media, by the beach, in Nice, in the Blue Zone. 

You can see the shot in a recent Guardian article. (btw the Gendarmerie really wanted to find our Macron serving cloth – we can’t tell you where we hid it).

The headline above says: ‘Is the ocean ‘having a moment’? This was the UN summit where the world woke up to the decline of the seas’. 

We hope so.

After all, as the sea dies we die. 

Elsewhere in Absurdity...

While the Ocean Rebellion crew were in Nice, others from the Absurd Intelligence team were sweltering through the U.K. heat to support, inspire, and be inspired at various shebangs. We don’t just list all of this to show off – it’s sometimes hard work, especially when we should be HeatStriking... but, as we’ve said before, The Network IS The Strategy:

• Daze has taken London Climate Action Week BY STORM...! 🌪️ As part of the pretty-much sold out Climate Curious LIVE podcast recording at London Climate Action Week, as well as attending We Are Family Foundation, Virgin Unite, Planetary Guardians, and DESNZ’s Intergenerational Collaboration Initiative co-design session; she participated in the Global Ethics Stocktake as one of 20 European environmental leaders from across sectors – including figures such as Paul Polman, Lord Nicholas Stern, Jennifer Lee Morgan, Kate Hampton, and more; she spoke on a panel exploring the intersection of climate and creativity at Futerra’s Solutions House; and attended the DEFRA lunch at Kew Gardens;
• Clare spoke at the Climate Outreach / Young Foundation exploration of public participation in Net Zero policymaking;
• Alex, Roc and Clare also attended the launch of our friend Atul K. Shah’s new book Organic Finance at St George’s City University, where Atul and Brian Eno spoke alongside Lord Parekh and Lord Sikka on de-schooling economics, the evils of accountancy, and how we can reimagine finance so it is in service to the planet, not to the god of greed;
• David went to the iswe & Wellcome event on global governance and the launch of the Assemblis website, effectively a step towards standardising citizen assemblies and the follow up actions;
• Charlie and Clare also spent time with Runnymede Trust at the Power to Prosper event in Hackney Wick;
• Alex also attended the CTRL SHIFT event on narrative, disinformation and emotions hosted at Create Bristol by Schumacher College;
• And then TOMORROW Sophie is speaking about Resisters: women fighting for justice, at 1pm on Thursday at the legendary Speakers Forum (Green Futures Field) at Glastonbury – if you’re festivalling, get along!

And finally, a few things we’ve been reading: Sally Rooney’s sharp solidarity with Palestine Action, Jon Alexander’s Actionism, and of course Greta’s post: