Sea Heroes: Extreme Edition

Liz Taylor, President, DOER Marine
Peter Willcox, Author, Greenpeace Captain: My Adventures in Protecting the Future of Our Planet
Stiv Wilson, Director of Campaigns, Story of Stuff

This is a Good Lit event, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation.

Peter Willcox was captain of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior on the night in 1985 when it was bombed by French secret agents and sank off New Zealand. One shipmate was killed.

Last year, a French agent who attached the mines to the hull of the Rainbow Warrior apologized for his deadly act. Does Peter Willcox accept the apology?

The bombed ship is just one of the Greenpeace captain’s adventurous tales. in 2013 he was part of a crew captured by Russian commandos and imprisoned for protesting an oil drilling platform in international waters. He has braved forest-burning slave owners in the Amazon, exposed international conspiracies involving diamond-smuggling, gun-trading and Al-Qaeda, and risked exposure to nuclear waste.

Liz Taylor is pursuing a different kind of sea adventure. Her company, DOER Marine, is working with a research organization founded by her mother, famed ocean explorer Sylvia Earle, to build mini-submarines to explore the furthest reaches of the oceans. The program, funded by Eric Schmidt, intends to enhance public understanding of the most remote regions of the oceans. The company was also involved in efforts to study the impact of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and does other work for the oil and gas industry.

Stiv Wilson has worked on campaigns to ban plastic bags and water bottles as well as microbeads. He’s sailed over 35,000 nautical miles to four of the five oceanic "garbage patches," documenting and communicating maritime plastic pollution first-hand.

This program presents an evening of stories from the high seas confronting power, taking personal risks and creating new understanding of our shared oceans.