The only fish I have are fishnets.
The only sharks I eat are loan sharks.
The ocean...
is beautiful,
it's mesmerising,
it's sexy,
it's mysterious,
and it makes me feel...
relaxed,
and comfortable,
and fluid.
It's ridiculously exciting to have someone like Bimini involved in a project like this,
talking about our relationship with the ocean.
Not only does Bimini represent a part of society
that previously felt that they did not have a voice,
but Bimini's managed to bridge a gap
to make so many more people engage with their art,
and...
if we're talking about ocean health today,
with someone like Bimini,
I'm just so excited about where this conversation can go.
I'm Joseph Sinclair
and I am a celebrity photographer.
I love cinematic photography because I'm very influenced by film,
so I wanted to create a very cinematic kind of hyper-realistic surreal environment,
that's why we chose Dungeness, cause it's a really amazing place,
which basically everywhere looks like a film set and you're absolutely spoilt for choice of places to shoot.
We have got the best weather today,
and we've got amazing talent and styling and hair and makeup and it's all come together...
hopefully it doesn't start raining.
We've got the most incredible group of people here today...
Noga Levy-Rapoport, Dawood Qureshi
and the incredible,
drag queen extraordinaire,
Bimini Bon Boulash.
My name's Dan O'Neill,
I'm a zoologist and wildlife presenter.
For me, the ocean is a place that has helped me through some really challenging times.
Working as a wildlife presenter,
I've actually been told to play down my sexuality,
which,
as an LGBT person,
brings back a huge amount of shame that I'd built up over my entire life,
and I am so frustrated that in the moment when it happened,
I didn't stand up for myself,
and that it took me over two years to realise that I needed to.
I can't think of any out, proud wildlife presenters,
and whether that's because people have tried
and they've had the door closed in their face,
or is it because so many people don't feel like they can follow that path
because they can't see anybody out there that does do it.
I don't know what the reason is,
but I do think it's changing.
The ocean is so interconnected with the land,
there is no one without the other.
I think today we've lost touch with our connection to nature.
I just think people see the ocean as this other place,
this kind of alien world
that is kind of unfeeling,
and I think if people changed their perceptions a little bit,
and if people realised how affected by our decisions the ocean is,
and how it isn't all powerful.
It can be hurt and it is hurting.
It's more fragile than people realise,
and it's health is right now suffering through our actions.
Here on the beach,
by part of the world that if we don't do anything about what the shoot is primarily focusing on,
it's going to be underwater in the future.
So it really feels like we're part of something important.
Just watching Bimini take shots right now...
it's electric.
First thing I really wanted to ask you...
what is your connection to the ocean?
I grew up in Great Yarmouth
and where I live, in my hometown, I'm about a two minute walk from the beach.
So I used to try and do that thing, you know, when you're like,
going for walks and get the stones,
and you like earnestly look out into the sea and throw stones,
used to try to do that, but was rubbish at it so I stopped.
But then, I just loved the beach, I love that scenery, I love the ocean.
And also "Bimini" actually...
my mum was going to call me Bimini,
if I was born the different sex.
Really?!
Yeah! She was going to call me Bimini.
It's an island...
it's also the roof of a boat, but that's less glamorous...
it's also an island in The Bahamas
and it's, I've been there before and it's just stunning.
Full of sharks right?
Full of sharks!
Love them.
Love a shark.
But yeah, it was, it's kind of like gorgeous blue waters, white sand.
But I just, to me, I'm happiest when I'm on the beach,
feel really like grounded and, and yeah just feel me.
We're wearing all sustainable designers or secondhand clothes today,
which I think is amazing.
It's becoming cooler.
I think there was a certain image of what it was
to be someone that was interested in recycling.
They'd think that we'd be like running around hugging trees and like doing all of that,
and like it, and yeah,
but now I think it's become a lot more cooler,
I think younger people are really influencing that.
I'm Noga Levy-Rapoport,
my pronouns are they, he and she,
I'm twenty years old and I'm a climate activist and student.
I've got my big sleeves on,
BIG!
Everything's big.
Like, I'm taking up a lot of space, which is nice.
I feel like we never get to do that.
Never get to just be big.
I've become like the ocean.
I've just become this like big,
mess of like creativity and fashion and like expression,
just like miles away from any urban life,
and I'm just out here in nature by the ocean.
It's really beautiful, I'm really loving it.
The ocean to me has always been the number one place where I can spend time with my family
and embrace in the love and community and joy that you can find when you're connecting with nature.
It's been the place of solace and respite,
of feeling peace and just being totally at home with the world around me.
It's where I draw the most strength, I can relax the most and I can be myself.
On this shoot, it was really important to me that all the designers
and all the clothes we're wearing are sustainable
and or are secondhand and sourced ethically.
It's such a big part, I think for people to see it,
because actually we can still be a part of that high fashion world,
we can still look good,
we can still express ourselves creatively.
I didn't have the strongest relationship with fashion,
for a really long time.
I was very insecure, I was very worried about my appearance.
I think a lot of LGBTQ people can really relate to that,
particularly in how you want to express your gender
and how you might feel confined to express your gender in certain ways,
or be too feminine or too masculine.
I think the world of fashion is really open for us,
we just have to find a way to get it right.
I'm terrified about the climate crisis most of the time,
I feel a lot of anger and a lot of fear and a lot of sadness,
but I also try to gain as much joy as I can.
Connecting with that natural world can bring us so much more strength
and a reminder of how much our passion is important
in that fight against overwhelming fear and paralysis
of the kind that I felt for such a long time,
and it can actually be that moment for us to transform that anger away from apathy and towards action.
So many queer people, for young people in particular,
we see so many of our friends going to the beach with their family,
and we know that there are two main issues
that they don't have to think about that we have to think about every day,
which is our relationship with our family members, which can be so tough for so many of us
and our relationship with our bodies.
Going to the beach can mean a really, really huge moment of...
"Oh my God, I'm terrified, how do I feel?
How do I, you know, get to be myself the way everyone else does?"
And I think drawing attention to that
and actually spotlighting how queer people feel about our ocean and about our natural world,
can be a moment where everyone who's even thinking about just going to the beach
can have that moment to say, actually, you know what,
this can be a space for me,
I'll make it space for me.
I deserve to be in this space.
I deserve to feel as free and as liberated
and as connected to nature as every single one of my peers.
We've got amazing people here with us today.
I'm so happy to be able to share this space with Dawood and Noga,
doing amazing environmental work,
with thought to what their conversation is about,
especially with the advent of massive increases in youth activism,
does this give you hope for the future?
Absolutely, they're so inspiring being able to kind of put their energy into doing that.
I think the younger generation are really getting involved with it,
I think that's important, but I also think what, what stops it,
or what stops it being made for everyone,
is a language thing or education.
And I feel like as long as the information is accessible for everyone
and people don't feel excluded or left out,
then we can all come together for it.
And I think that's where the future that needs to go,
everyone needs to do their bit.
I'm Dawood Qureshi,
I'm an activist, a writer, a journalist, and a marine biologist.
I'm a trans, non-binary woman,
I am also a person of colour and a Muslim.
The ocean to me really means flexibility and freedom,
and it really speaks to me on a very visceral level
because it just says to me that
there is so much more to the planet that we don't know about,
and there's so much more to understand.
It makes me think of family,
and I've had experiences where, with my friends,
with my chosen family, with my family back home, where it's felt comfortable,
so it's a comfort,
it's all of the things that you think of when you think of a safe, comfortable home.
I've faced quite a lot of obstacles
when I've gone through my journey into wildlife and conservation,
and it's something that I've been really passionate about,
and that's been really intrinsic to my journey
into kind of understanding myself and my identity.
It's interesting that I feel... not out of place.
And yet we're in these kinds of clothes.
Yeah!
Like you should feel quite out of place,
and yet you do feel very much like this is the environment that I now exist in.
I think part of that is almost everybody here is queer in some form.
Oh absolutely.
And everyone who's not is like an active ally.
So you've got this kind of really collaborative feeling,
and strangely, even though like probably none of us
have quite done anything exactly like this before.
Never combined the love of the ocean with the queerness.
Whereas like, that's exactly where it should be.
Intersectional environmentalism is the idea that
in order to be inclusive to everyone who's affected by environmentalism,
you have to look at how the issues affect both people and the planet.
Because we haven't properly gone into a lot of the other issues that are affecting people in society,
like homelessness, like racism,
and like a lot of the other issues that are affecting people
who often get pushed out of the picture
in terms of talking about wildlife and conservation and environmentalism in general.
Understanding how all of these different things link,
will then allow us to understand how we can tackle other issues and also tackle environmentalism.
When you talk about minorities,
and when you talk about, you know, the people that we are
and where we come from and who we relate to in terms of,
who's going to look at us and see themselves represented in this shoot,
then you really understand that actually,
that's why it's important because what you're doing is you're
representing the people who are actually affected by the crisis we're actually talking about.
If we relate the issues with our ocean and our environment back to intersectionality,
we can then talk about how our ocean is this real point of connection
for a lot of different environments around the planet and little of different people.
And if you think about the ocean as this vast ecosystem,
that is very finely balanced,
there are small things that can very much tip that balance.
And even if you think about the origins of climate change
and about why it's happening,
that comes right back to how we consume and how we populate the planet
and about how we live and how we exist and about where we live.
And so these things are really, really directly connected,
and if they're talked about very differently and only by themselves,
we can lose that connection to our ocean.
I feel like there's almost no generation that's ever existed on this planet,
more aware of kind of the imbalance of affects of what we do,
than the generation coming forward now, the youth generation, the youth activist generation.
Does that get you excited about the future?
A hundred percent!
GRETA!
Because I think it's amazing that they're, that people are so more in tune,
they know, they see it, they can learn about.
Social media is a huge platform for sharing information.
You can get access to things so quickly now because of the internet.
I remember my mum would always be like,
"oh, we used to say that in the seventies,"
and I'm like...
"yeah, but it's happening."
Like it doesn't mean it's not a thing.
Climate change is definitely disruptive, it's happening,
and we do need to... we need to sort it.
So, yeah, the youth. The younger generation...
Whitney you were right...
Children are the future.
It's the stuff that we do now that are gonna create the world of the future,
and we're the custodians of the ocean, we're keeping it,
but what we do right now, isn't just going to affect the animals, the wildlife,
but every community, every coastal community, people in the global south, all over the world,
what's your kind of hope for the future, from projects like this and getting people involved?
Well I hope for change.
I hope we can kind of come up with ways because this, it's great,
what we're doing now, having these conversations, it's amazing.
I feel personally, there's only so much the individual can do,
the world needs to come together,
it really has to be like a collective effort.
So yeah, I just hope we can kind of be smarter,
we need to act smarter, act faster and just get on with it.
I think people forget that half of the oxygen comes from the ocean.
Everything we do to the ocean is so connected to ourselves.
It's almost like the way that we look at our bodies,
our organs, our arms, our limbs, everything's connected,
and the ocean is just the same with us.
You know, every decision we make is going to affect us in the long term.
I hope that what people are going to realise, if they know the history of the planet
that we have been here, such a small time,
all of this nature is gonna be here way after us.
If we want to stay here, if we want to look after it, we need to act and keep and get it done,
cause everything that we do has a footprint on, on this planet and everything,
like we said, everything's connected to the ocean, the moon, the wind, the sea, everything is, it is.
We need to look after that.
And know that if we don't,
then we'll be gone and this is going to stay here and be gorgeous without us...
Save the planet!
The number one thing you can do if you want to support the climate justice movement,
if you want to get involved in environmentalism,
is formed those networks reach out and talk to people.
Find the community that you feel speaks most to you,
find the one aspect of climate justice that you care about the most.
Every single person has something they can bring to this movement,
that community is waiting for you.
It's so much more than just doing individual actions,
it's about joining an immense movement that needs every single person.
Oftentimes, I'll go to speak at different events,
and I'm the only one there who looks like me.
And whilst that's very much an honour to be speaking on these issues,
that's not useful, that's not a sustainable form of growth,
because then I become a tokenistic aspect of this movement
and I become an individual speaking from my very own experiences.
We need more people.
And it doesn't really matter how much or little you know,
it's not really about all or nothing.
Once you relate to the natural world in any way,
then you become a warrior and a protector for the natural world.
If I struggled to see a role model when I was a kid,
I hope that just by being here and by having so much new representation in this space,
we're inspiring a future generation of people
who will be more connected to the ocean,
to be more inspired to have conversations around ocean health,
and will feel more empowered to act...
because the ocean needs our help right now, more than it ever has before.
Alright babes, I'm Bimini!
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