Thirteen Greenpeace protestors attached themselves to the St. Johns Bridge and dangled there for almost 40 hours in an attempt to block Royal Dutch Shell's icebreaker MSV Fennica from continuing its journey to drill for oil in the Arctic. Along with several Greenpeace "kayactivists", the protestors were successful in blocking the ship from moving forward Thursday morning. However, later in the afternoon Portland law enforcement got involved. They successfully convinced two of the Greenpeace activists to detach themselves from the bridge, and their absence created a gap just big enough for the icebreaker to move through.
The goal of this protest was to prevent the ship from leaving Portland and returning to the Arctic to continue with Shell's oil drilling operations. Greenpeace activists had been hopeful that their protest would cause a long enough delay so that Shell lost about a year's worth of work.