9 Photos of the Awesome "Shell No" Protest Just Held In the Ocean Near Seattle

This Saturday, hundreds of environmental activists turned out in Seattle to celebrate a day-long festival called the "Paddle in Seattle" and protest Royal Dutch Shell's plans to increase drilling activities in the Arctic Ocean.

According to the Associated Press, hundreds of those "kayaktivists" joined an on-water protest called "Shell No" in the waters of Elliott Bay near the Port of Seattle's Terminal 5, where Shell's 400-foot Polar Pioneer oil rig was docked. The protesters were accompanied by a solar-powered barge called "The People's Platform," and unveiled banners demanding climate justice and an end to the energy giant's plan to dramatically expand its drilling footprint in the polar region.

"Why would we invest in an energy source that scientists say is leading us to catastrophe?" Greenpeace USA executive director Annie Leonard asked the AP. As the BBC reports, Shell has a massive investment in the drilling project; the energy giant has "spent about $6 billion on exploration in the Arctic — a region estimated to have about 20% of the world's undiscovered oil and gas."

The protest proved to be colorful and beautiful, as the photos below show.