Billie Eilish is stepping up to help conserve Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The non-profit CoralWatch, which is working to save the world’s largest coral reef, has gotten the singer’s permission to use the singer’s breakthrough 2016 single, “Ocean Eyes,” as part of a social media campaign to raise awareness about the reef. The vital oceanic ecosystem is in serious jeopardy due to widespread coral bleaching caused by the warming of ocean temperatures due to the global climate crisis.
“SHE SAID YES! Billie Eilish has given us permission to use her song ‘Ocean eyes’ to help us raise further awareness about the reef! Thank you Billie!,” CoralWatch wrote in a Facebook post announcing the deal over the weekend. The post included a short video featuring one of CoralWatch’s youngest and most dedicated supporters, eight-year-old Elijah Richardson, sharing some information about the campaign.
“I’m really excited and I’m really happy, thank you Billie for saying yes,” Richardson said in the video, explaining that a year ago he messaged Billie asking if CoralWatch could use “Eyes” in their campaign, noting at the time that he had less than 200 followers to her tens of millions. “Somehow it got to her eventually and she said yes,” said Richardson, who called the reef “a whole new world,” filled with creatures who depend on it for their livelihood. A spokesperson for Eilish could not be reached for additional comment at press time.
One of the seven natural wonders of the world, the Great Barrier Reef is made up of 3,000 individual reef systems that have been badly damaged by marine heatwaves that resulted in mass bleaching events in 2016, 2017 and 2020 that cut the amount of shallow-water coral reefs in the system by half.
Last month, Eilish teamed up with one of her Office heroes and a group of scientists to call on world leaders to take “urgent” action on the climate. In a video message recorded with Dunder-Mifflin irritant actor Rainn Wilson, British explorer Levison Wood and Robert Irwin — son of late Australian conservationist Steve “Crocodile Hunter” Irwin — the singer weighed in on the need to act now in advance of this month’s U.N. COP26 climate summit.
“This year our leaders are deciding the global actions required on the environment climate emergency in a critical decade for our planet,” Eilish said in the brief video message. “We must stand together and speak up to save our planet, not just for us, but for our future generations, and we need urgent, urgent action now and to work together as one.”
Check out the Facebook post and Elijah’s plea below.
