Hundreds of protesters in small boats and kayaks came together in Seattle to make a stand against oil giant Shell and its plans to resume Arctic oil exploration.
The company, also plans to keep two of its drilling rigs in the city’s port.
The move has been met with dismay from a number of environmental groups, including Greenpeace, with a vow to disrupt the company’s efforts to use the city as a base for drilling.
Fears have been raised drilling in the region could lead to serious ecological damage.
On Saturday, kayakers paddled around one of the rigs shouting “Shell No”.
Other opponents of the rigs docking in Seattle, a city known for its environmental causes, include Mayor Ed Murray and the City Council.
Earlier this week, the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management gave conditional approval to Shell’s resumption of fossil fuel exploration in the Arctic, which was suspended in 2012.
Last week, a protester perched herself on a 15-foot tripod in a bid to block the entrance of a Shell fuel transfer station.
The protest was staged on Seattle’s Harbor Island after the US Department of the Interior gave conditional approval to Shell for it to explore for oil in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska.
The Arctic is estimated to contain about 20% of the world’s undiscovered oil and natural gas, with some 34 billion barrels of oil in US waters alone.
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