Reno resident Marnee Benson was one of two applicants chosen (from a pool of 6,000 people throughout the world) to embark on a trip to Iceland with Greenpeace last year. The opportunity came when Greenpeace contacted its cyberactivists, including Benson, and requested they get pledges from people to consider visiting Iceland if the country stopped whaling. As an incentive, Greenpeace did something unprecedented within the organization: It offered to the most deserving candidate a bunk on the Greenpeace ship bound for Iceland. First, the group picked candidates based on the number of people from whom they were able to gain pledges. Then, the top 20 finalists answered a set of questions. Next, Greenpeace members chose the winner from five finalists. In the end, they picked two, a Nigerian man and Benson. A week later, Benson was in Iceland. This is her story.

AS THE GREENPEACE SHIP ESPERANZA PULLED INTO THE TINY ICELANDIC PORT OF HÚSAVIK, I noticed on the pier a handful of well-dressed people waiting to greet us. I’d been anticipating this day for weeks, knowing this picture-perfect hamlet was building part of its economy, and its community, on the preservation and appreciation of nature. Specifically, Húsavik had spent years establishing itself as a haven for whales and a hotspot for whale watching — no trivial feat for a small town in a proud country with a pro-whaling government and a rich history of whale exploitation.

Within a few minutes, I was up on the ship’s bridge being introduced to Halldor Blöndal, president of Iceland’s Parliament. As video cameras rolled and government officials looked on, I tried to keep my composure and convey to Blöndal my thoughts on Iceland’s environmental policies. We spoke briefly about whaling versus nature tourism and the inconsistency of maintaining one in the face of the other. I made the point that different people from around the world simply cannot reconcile a love of nature with the killing of whales. I mentioned that I am from Northern Nevada, where resource conservation and adventure tourism are making a dent in the conventional wisdom of development at any cost. Blöndal seemed interested in my ideas and told me he appreciated my commitment to the cause.

I earned a trip to Iceland by taking part in a global campaign with Greenpeace to convince the Icelandic government to end all whaling. The central argument of the campaign was economic: Iceland stands to gain more from tourism than it does from whaling. I participated by asking people to consider visiting Iceland if and only if that country stopped killing whales. More than 50,000 people supported our cause by signing a pledge to that effect. But some of them asked: why does a girl from Nevada care so much about whales in the North Atlantic?

The answer is simple: whales make the world a richer place. I feel the same way about all animals. Go outside and look around. Everything you see — the bugs and the birds, coyotes, and snakes — is the product of a dynamic, age-old process of competition and adaptation. Each living creature makes a unique contribution to the state of biodiversity, and I do not think the contribution of mankind should be the elimination of other species.

The environment is the one thing that unites and sustains us all, and it is vitally important to learn as much as possible about ecological issues. More to the point, human beings have a unique consciousness among living things and with that consciousness comes responsibility. It is the responsibility of those who are fortunate to exercise restraint and to ensure all creatures —especially large animals and predators — are not only spared extinction, but are given a chance to thrive in their natural habitat. The Greenpeace trip afforded me the opportunity to live for a month with dedicated people who share my commitment to protecting the natural world.

While on the ship, I kept a Web log. Remember that meeting with Halldor Blöndal? It was not even the highlight of that one particular day ...

We were cruising along during the whale-watching expedition when I saw something a bit strange on the horizon. It looked like a waterspout from a whale, but at that distance it would have had to be 30 feet high, so I didn’t say anything. But there it was again, and pretty soon the boat was making a beeline for this thing. The guide was speaking German, so I didn’t know what he was saying: I only knew that all the other passengers were now on high alert. What are you saying? Then he said, in English, that there had been sightings of a blue whale in the bay that week, the first in seven years. And you know what? Those were waterspouts I saw, and those are blue whales.

Blue whales are awe-inspiring creatures. They are the largest animals ever to have lived on Earth, and they can be up to 33 meters long. They live to be 90-95 years old when left alone. They were hunted last century to near extinction. We saw several blue whales on this night. We heard the soft but powerful “poof” of their exhalation as it filled the quiet evening air. We imagined their dive to the depths of the sea and we wondered about the rest of their world. I will never forget it.

Marnee Benson is a University of Nevada, Reno graduate student and environmentalist.