New to Ocean Rising? This is what you need to know.

It all starts here.

The ocean is being killed, and the people responsible are getting away with it.

I’m Luke McMillan. I came to ocean journalism after two decades in humanitarian crises and conservation work—from Rwandan refugee camps and Gaza to whaling ports, policy rooms, and field research across Madagascar, Seychelles, and the Canary Islands. That work taught me how institutions fail. Now I document those failures in ocean governance.

I write for The Guardian, BBC Wildlife, and Oceanographic Magazine. I’m Head of Hunting and Captivity at Whale and Dolphin Conservation. When whaling stories break, I’m the person broadcasters call.

Ocean Rising is where the ocean stories that matter most get investigated properly. Long-form reporting. Science made clear. No fluff, no spin, no clickbait.

4,700+ subscribers. 110+ countries. You’re part of it.

---

Start with these:

Breaking News: Our Planet Has Hit Its First Climate Tipping Point Coral reefs are dying beyond recovery. This is what that actually means.

I’m a Person Too: The Legal Revolution That Could Save Whales A new movement, grounded in Indigenous law and legal precedent, seeks to grant whales the right to live, thrive and be heard.

Emergency Broadcast: A Message to the Room in Geneva The Global Plastics Treaty could change everything. But only if the world’s leaders are brave enough.

The Mountains Beneath the Ice How Antarctica’s hidden peaks reveal a quieter, older resilience.

The Deep Brief #16 Your end-of-week ocean intelligence. This is what the weekly briefing looks like.

---

Ocean Rising beyond Substack

Some Ocean Rising work also reaches wider audiences through major publications.

Over the past year, I have written for Oceanographic Magazine on Antarctic krill governance, deep sea mining, the toxic aftermath of the X Press Pearl shipping disaster in Sri Lanka, and the public uprising to protect flamingos, turtles and protected coastline in Albania.

You can read those here:

Krill or be QRILLed: Who governs the Antarctic Ocean?

Special feature: The deep sea and the race to mine the abyss

Poison in the wake: When shipping plastic escapes justice

The Flamingo Revolution

Those pieces are free to read elsewhere.

Ocean Rising is what keeps the wider work moving.

This is where I build the ideas, follow the stories, test the arguments, publish the briefings, write the investigations and speak directly to the people who care about the ocean before the rest of the world catches up.

---

What free subscribers get

Free subscribers receive The Deep Brief, breaking ocean stories, selected essays, public investigations, podcast updates and the main Ocean Rising newsletter.

A lot of this work will remain free. That matters to me.

Ocean journalism should not only reach people who can afford another subscription.

---

What paid subscribers make possible

Paid subscribers fund the time behind the work: the reading, research, interviews, document digging, science explainers, awkward questions and long form reporting that do not happen if independent journalism has no base beneath it.

Paid subscribers get full investigations, deeper analysis, paid only essays, archive access, behind the scenes updates, early chapters from my book Finlay and the Whale (2027), and the knowledge that they are helping keep serious ocean journalism alive and available to a wider public.

If Ocean Rising is useful to you, and you want it to grow into one of the most trusted independent ocean publications in the world, become a paid reader, £6/month or £50/year.

If you’re not ready to pay, that’s fine. Read. Learn. Share the work. Stick around.

The ocean has been treated as background scenery for too long.

Ocean Rising is here to put it back in the foreground.

Luke