I am a citizen of the ocean 🌊

4 min readApr 12, 2022

Purple Penguin is honoured to announce our impact partners for the upcoming Vagrant Penguins NFT release: Ultramarine Ocean Action Summit & The International Dialogue for Underwater Munitions.

Ultramarine aims to inspire greater action and solutions to ensure a healthy, vibrant, and resilient ocean. Their annual summit features a virtual event live-streamed from Sir Richard Branson’s Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands, and around the world!

We will be supporting co-founder Jeremy McKane’s and Dr. James Porter’s mission to remove cancer-causing WWII munitions from our waterways. The International Dialogue for Underwater Munitions team has removed more bombs from the Baltic Sea than anyone else.

You may recognize Dr. Porter from the award-winning documentary he helped create as Chief Scientific Advisor: Chasing Coral.

James and his team discovered that feather duster worms, sea urchins, and various types of coral found near bombs and shrapnel contained high levels of carcinogenic material — in some cases 100,000 times more than what is considered safe for commercially edible seafood.

These ticking time bombs are eroding, leaking carcinogens absorbed by the coral and surrounding marine life, causing cancer at astronomical rates.

For most climate concerns, it’s hard to know where to start, but this is a finite problem with a solution that helps both aquatic life and human life on land.

“Any country that has a coastline and has ever had war is going to be a place where you can find this problem,” said Porter.

We will be working to support Jim, Jeremy, and their teams to raise funds for the 4 -phase removal process off the coasts of Hawaii and Puerto Rico, where toxins have caused a 40% higher cancer rate than mainland communities.

This mission hits very close to home for our founder Kevin and his family, as both his grandfathers served in WWII, and his father Shawn passed away from cancer in 2015.

Shawn’s father William was a well-respected and awarded pilot, sergeant, and airway inspector in the Canadian airforce during WWII, and also passed from cancer before Kevin was born.

On his mother’s side, Kevin’s grandfather Fred was a minesweeper on the HMCS Comox in WWII. The Comox was a patrol craft that protected Canada’s shorelines and was also responsible for surveying the waterways to find and destroy live munitions, allowing large ships to travel safely. Fragments from these bombs left in the water still affect us today.

Now you might ask how are bombs removed eco-friendly?

4 phases in the process:

1) Pilot process in Hawaii
2) Survey of the reef to find all the munitions
3) Neutralize the toxins (often an injection which removes the chemical and explosive threat, also makes the metals recyclable)
4) Survey and assess the environmental impact

Our initial goal is to raise over $100,000 USD for the munitions removal initiative with 20% of sales from season 1 of our Vagrant Penguins NFTs collection. This would allow the team to begin the first 2 phases of the process.

Secondary market royalties will allow us to continue supporting Ultra Marine in their goal to raise 10 million dollars for the munitions cleanup initiative.

Along with donation support, we will be using our platform to work with Jeremy, Jim, and their network to bring more ocean education experiences.

Below you can see some pictures of Kevin’s grandfathers and their time in the war as well as some images of the same mines we will be helping to remove.