Download or read book Coral Whisperers written by Irus Braverman and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2018-10-30 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, a catastrophic global bleaching event devastated many of the world’s precious coral reefs. Working on the front lines of ruin, today’s coral scientists are struggling to save these important coral reef ecosystems from the imminent threats of rapidly warming, acidifying, and polluted oceans. Coral Whisperers captures a critical moment in the history of coral reef science. Gleaning insights from over one hundred interviews with leading scientists and conservation managers, Irus Braverman documents a community caught in an existential crisis and alternating between despair and hope. In this important new book, corals emerge not only as signs and measures of environmental catastrophe, but also as catalysts for action.
Download or read book Life on the Rocks written by Juli Berwald and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-04-04 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER AND BOOKLIST The story of the urgent fight to save coral reefs, and why it matters to us all Coral reefs are a microcosm of our planet: extraordinarily diverse, deeply interconnected, and full of wonders. When they’re thriving, these fairy gardens hidden beneath the ocean’s surface burst with color and life. They sustain bountiful ecosystems and protect vulnerable coasts. Corals themselves are evolutionary marvels that build elaborate limestone formations from their collective skeletons, broker symbiotic relationships with algae, and manufacture their own fluorescent sunblock. But corals across the planet are in the middle of an unprecedented die-off, beset by warming oceans, pollution, damage by humans, and a devastating pandemic. Juli Berwald fell in love with coral reefs as a marine biology student, entranced by their beauty and complexity. Alarmed by their peril, she traveled the world to discover how to prevent their loss. She met scientists and activists operating in emergency mode, doing everything they can think of to prevent coral reefs from disappearing forever. She was so amazed by the ingenuity of these last-ditch efforts that she joined in rescue missions, unexpected partnerships, and risky experiments, and helped rebuild reefs with rebar and zip ties. Life on the Rocks is an inspiring, lucid, meditative ode to the reefs and the undaunted scientists working to save them against almost impossible odds. As she also attempts to help her daughter in her struggle with mental illness, Berwald explores what it means to keep fighting a battle whose outcome is uncertain. She contemplates the inevitable grief of climate change and the beauty of small victories.
Download or read book At Every Depth written by Tessa Hill and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2024-02-13 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world’s oceans are changing at a drastic pace. Beneath the waves and along the coasts, climate change and environmental degradation have spurred the most radical transformations in human history. In response, the people who know the ocean most intimately are taking action for the sake of our shared future. Community scientists track species in California tidepools. Researchers dive into the waters around Sydney to replant kelp forests. Scientists and First Nations communities collaborate to restore clam gardens in the Pacific Northwest. In At Every Depth, the oceanographer Tessa Hill and the science journalist Eric Simons profile these and other efforts to understand and protect marine environments, taking readers to habitats from shallow tidepools to the deep sea. They delve into the many human connections to the ocean—how people live with and make their living from the waters—journeying to places as far-flung as coral reefs, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and the Arctic and Antarctic poles. At Every Depth shares the stories of people from all walks of life, including scientists, coastal community members, Indigenous people, shellfish farmers, and fisheries workers. It brings together varied viewpoints, showing how scientists’ research and local and Indigenous knowledge can complement each other to inform a more sustainable future. Poignantly written and grounded in science, this book offers a narrative perspective on the changing oceans, letting us see how our relationships to the oceans are changing too.
Download or read book Moving Target written by Christina Diaz Gonzalez and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2015-08-25 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this exciting and action-packed adventure by an award-winning author, a young girl discovers her secret ancient bloodline. The fate of her family, and the world, may rest in her hands . . . Cassie Arroyo, an American studying in Rome, has her world ripped apart when someone tries to kill her father, an art history professor at an Italian university. Is she their next target?Cassie sets out to uncover what is happening, only to learn that she is a member of an ancient bloodline that enables her to use the Spear of Destiny--a legendary object that can alter the future. Now running from a secret organization intent on killing those from her bloodline, Cassie must--with the help of some friends--decipher the clues that will lead her to the Spear.Christina Diaz Gonzalez has created a fast-paced thrill-ride of a book, rich with riddles and myth, that young readers will not want to put down.
Download or read book Islands written by Steven Roger Fischer and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2013-02-15 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Lost’s Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 crashed, the survivors found themselves on a seemingly deserted island. In Defoe’s novel, Robinson Crusoe spends twenty-eight years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, while in the movie Castaway Tom Hanks survives over four years on a South Pacific island. And Jurassic Park kept its dinosaur population confined to an island off the coast of Central America. Islands often find themselves at the center of imagined worlds, secluded and sometimes mystical locales filled with strange creatures and savage populations. The cannibals, raptors, and smoke monsters that exist on the islands of popular culture aside, the more than one million islands and islets on the planet are indeed small , geological, biological, and cultural laboratories. From Britain to Japan, from the Galapagos to Manhattan, this book roams the planet to provide the first global introduction to these waterlocked landforms. Longtime island dweller Steven Roger Fischer shows that, since time began, islands have been one of the primary birthplaces for plants, animals, and proto-humans. These eyots of stone and sand—whether in ocean, lake, or river—fostered the human race, and Fischer recounts how humanity then exploited these remarkable habitats as stepping stones to global dominion. He explores island economics, warfare, and politics, and he examines the role they have played in literature, art and psychology. At the same time, he sparks our imagination with visions of islands—from Atlantis to Tahiti, Treasure Island to Hawaii. Ultimately, he reveals, these isolated mini-worlds are a measure of humankind itself. An engaging account of the islets that have enriched, lured, terrified, and inspired us, Islands shines new light on these cradles of earth—and human—history.
Download or read book The Coral Island written by Robert Michael Ballantyne and published by Thomas Nelson and Sons. This book was released on 1884 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Coral Browne written by Rose Collis and published by Oberon Books. This book was released on 2008-04-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Described by Alan Bates as ‘mischievous, alarming, unpredictable and outrageous’, and by Tyrone Guthrie as ‘the most degenerate woman I ever met in my life’, the indomitable Coral Browne towered over the British and American stages for nearly half a century. Remarkable for her mesmerising character performances, her glamour, her liberated attitude to sex and the quickness of her often-savage wit, Coral, a 21-year old from Australia, arrived in the UK in 1934, armed with an eccentric personality, and ‘a mouth like a docker.’ Over the next forty years Coral would forge a reputation as a great wit and a brilliant actress on both sides of the Atlantic, starring in the premiere of Joe Orton’s notorious What The Butler Saw in her Balmain underwear, and making a series of iconic performances in films such as The Killing of Sister George, Auntie Mame and The Ruling Class. Her unashamed appetite for men (and women) led her into countless affairs; her famous lovers included Maurice Chevalier, Paul Robeson, Cecil Beaton, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. She was also renowned for her commitment to her friends, who included Alec Guinness, John Schlesinger, Barry Humphries, Alan Bennett, and Vivien Leigh. Famously, she even befriended the exiled spy Guy Burgess whilst on tour in Russia, berating him for his treachery whilst undertaking to send pyjamas from his Jermyn Street tailor. This episode would later provide the basis for Alan Bennett’s drama An Englishman Abroad, for which Coral won the BAFTA for Best Actress. Later in life she would meet and marry the horror film star, Vincent Price, and together they would become the most celebrated and least probable Hollywood celebrity couple of the day. This Effing Lady draws upon interviews with friends and family of Coral Browne, and a wealth of previously unpublished correspondence between Coral and Alec Guinness, Vincent Price, Guy Burgess, John Schlesinger, Alan Bates, Alan Bennett and many others, to produce an immaculately researched and correspondingly witty account of the life of a remarkable and truly original star.
Download or read book The Nature of Data written by Jenny Goldstein and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2022-10 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By synthesizing scholarly work at the intersection of political ecology, digital geography, and science and technology studies, The Nature of Data analyzes how new digital technologies affect environments and their control.
Download or read book Curious Species written by Whitney Barlow Robles and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-05 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling and innovative exploration of how animals shaped the field of natural history and its ecological afterlives Can corals build worlds? Do rattlesnakes enchant? What is a raccoon, and what might it know? Animals and the questions they raised thwarted human efforts to master nature during the so-called Enlightenment--a historical moment when rigid classification pervaded the study of natural history, people traded in people, and imperial avarice wrapped its tentacles around the globe. Whitney Barlow Robles makes animals the unruly protagonists of eighteenth-century science through journeys to four spaces and ecological zones: the ocean, the underground, the curiosity cabinet, and the field. Her forays reveal a forgotten lineage of empirical inquiry, one that forced researchers to embrace uncertainty. This tumultuous era in the history of human-animal encounters still haunts modern biologists and ecologists as they struggle to fathom animals today. In an eclectic fusion of history and nature writing, Robles alternates between careful historical investigations and probing personal narratives. These excavations of the past and present of distinct nonhuman creatures reveal the animal foundations of human knowledge and show why tackling our current environmental crisis first requires looking back in time.
Download or read book Zooland written by Irus Braverman and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-28 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes a unique stance on a controversial topic: zoos. Zoos have their ardent supporters and their vocal detractors. And while we all have opinions on what zoos do, few people consider how they do it. Irus Braverman draws on more than seventy interviews conducted with zoo managers and administrators, as well as animal activists, to offer a glimpse into the otherwise unknown complexities of zooland. Zooland begins and ends with the story of Timmy, the oldest male gorilla in North America, to illustrate the dramatic transformations of zoos since the 1970s. Over these decades, modern zoos have transformed themselves from places created largely for entertainment to globally connected institutions that emphasize care through conservation and education. Zoos naturalize their spaces, classify their animals, and produce spectacular experiences for their human visitors. Zoos name, register, track, and allocate their animals in global databases. Zoos both abide by and create laws and industry standards that govern their captive animals. Finally, zoos intensely govern the reproduction of captive animals, carefully calculating the life and death of these animals, deciding which of them will be sustained and which will expire. Zooland takes readers behind the exhibits into the world of zoo animals and their caretakers. And in so doing, it turns its gaze back on us to make surprising interconnections between our understandings of the human and the nonhuman.
Download or read book Coral Lives written by Michele Currie Navakas and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-07-11 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, coral specimens featured prominently in cabinets of curiosity, and in literary work by writers from Herman Melville to Lydia Huntley Sigourney. Children sang of coral in popular songs. Women, both free and enslaved, wore coral beads. Reef samples drew crowds to galleries and museums. And coral's unique qualities as animal, vegetable, and mineral inspired countless Americans to praise the "coral insect" for creating what one author called "the most wonder-provoking of all natural objects." In this account of coral's history as material and metaphor, Michele Navakas argues that coral shaped the nation's thinking and became deeply entwined with the histories of slavery, wage labor, and women's reproductive and domestic work. European slave traders used red coral to purchase persons along the coast of West Africa from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries, while enslaved people performed the labor that brought raw coral from Caribbean, Mediterranean, and Pacific waters to European naturalists and coral traders. In the nineteenth-century U.S., Black and white women frequently compared their bodies to reef-building polyps that silently and continually produced new beings and forged intergenerational bonds. The book traces the global flows of labor, production, manufacture, and trade that brought coral into the daily lives of nineteenth-century Americans, and discusses the cultural traditions surrounding coral in four major geographic regions-Africa, the Pacific, the Caribbean, and Europe-that shaped early American understandings of coral. It then examines works of literature and of natural history by a cross-section of U.S. authors who used the analogy of coral to describe a system in which the labors of each individual enrich all, but also as a body that grows only by silently entombing the living bodies of its most essential workers. A coda addresses the value of historically oriented environmental humanities scholarship at a time of climate crisis"--
Download or read book Conservation of Tropical Coral Reefs written by Brian Joseph McFarland and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-12-16 with total page 771 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book critically engages with how the conservation of tropical coral reefs is financed. Beginning with the context of tropical coral reef degradation and loss, alongside an overview of tropical ecology, global environmental policy and finance, the book reviews several conservation financing instruments. These include ecotourism, debt-for-nature swaps, impact investments, and government domestic budgetary expenditures. From the Great Barrier Reef, to the Coral Triangle, to the Mesoamerican Reef, tropical coral reef degradation and loss are serious global environmental issues, contributing to loss revenue and food insecurity for coastal communities, and species extinction. Yet, many leading companies, individuals, and governments are making a positive impact on tropical coral reef conservation through the use of conservation finance. Conservation of Tropical Coral Reefs, using 30 case studies which span 23 countries and 6 continents, tells the history of international conservation finance and provides a variety of options for individuals, businesses, and governments to support conservation financing projects.
Download or read book Microbium The Neglected Lives of Micro matter written by Joela Jacobs and published by punctum books. This book was released on 2023-09-06 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Microbium: The Neglected Lives of Micro-matter tells the story of small matter such as bacteria, coral, fungi, lichen, pollen, protozoa, and viruses. With short entries that are organized like a herbarium or similar specimen collection, the book is a "microbium"-both the term for a single microbe and a play on "microbiome." As such, Microbium makes visible the often overseen but huge impact of miniscule matter on human culture and the environment. Each entry is a "microscopic reading" that describes the natural history and scientific discovery of a particular form of micro-matter, while also telling a story about the cultural and artistic roles it has played over the centuries. From the poetry of Emily Dickinson to the "coralness" of coral reefs to contemporary literature about the COVID-19 pandemic, this book places micro-matter under a cultural microscope and translates the significance of the invisible interspecies social realm to the human scale, magnifying the many ways in which micro-matter matters. Ultimately, Microbium shows the potential of micro-matter to teach us how to revitalize our political and cultural systems, habits of thought, and aesthetic or representational modes.
Download or read book The Priority List written by David Menasche and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this “beautiful, heartfelt, and ultimately important story about love, kinship, gratitude, and miracles” (Elizabeth Gilbert, #1 New York Times bestselling author), a beloved high school English teacher with terminal brain cancer undertakes a cross-country journey to reunite with his former students in order to find out if he made a difference and discovers what is truly important in life along the way. David Menasche lived for his work as a high school English teacher. His passion inspired his students, and between lessons on Shakespeare and sentence structure, he forged a unique bond with his kids, buoying them through personal struggles while sharing valuable life lessons. When brain cancer ultimately stole David’s vision, memory, mobility, and—most tragically of all—his ability to continue teaching, he was devastated by the thought that he would no longer have the chance to impact his students’ lives each day. But teaching was something Menasche just couldn’t give up. Undaunted by the difficult road ahead of him, he decided to end his treatments and make life his classroom. He turned to Facebook with an audacious plan: a journey across America—by bus, by train, by red-tipped cane—in hopes of seeing firsthand how his kids were faring in life. Had he made a difference? Within forty-eight hours of posting, former students in more than fifty cities replied with offers of support and shelter. Traveling more than eight thousand miles from Miami to New York, and visiting hundreds of his students, David’s fearless journey explores the things we all want and need out of life—family, security, independence, love, adventure—and forces us to stop to consider what truly matters in life. Evocative, moving, and inspirational, Priority List “is a rousing testimony to the ways in which, in the face of death, living fully in the present moment becomes possible” (Publishers Weekly).
Download or read book Against Football written by Steve Almond and published by Melville House Publishing. This book was released on 2014 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With American Football becoming an increasingly popular sport in the UK, concerns are also being raised about the health impact the sport can have on players. The scary facts about American football causing brain injury have become a hot topic in the media, especially as the same worries are surfacing for other full contact sports such as rugby. Steve Almond was a keen American football fan, but, in light of recent scientific studies about the prevalence of injuries within the sport has slowly turned against the game.
Download or read book The Other Side of Paradise written by Julia Cooke and published by Seal Press. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Change looms in Havana, Cuba's capital, a city electric with uncertainty yet cloaked in cliché, 90 miles from U.S. shores and off-limits to most Americans. Journalist Julia Cooke, who lived there at intervals over a period of five years, discovered a dynamic scene: baby-faced anarchists with Mohawks gelled with laundry soap, whiskey-drinking children of the elite, Santería trainees, pregnant prostitutes, university graduates planning to leave for the first country that will give them a visa. This last generation of Cubans raised under Fidel Castro animate life in a waning era of political stagnation as the rest of the world beckons: waiting out storms at rummy hurricane parties and attending raucous drag cabarets, planning ascendant music careers and black-market business ventures, trying to reconcile the undefined future with the urgent today. Eye-opening and politically prescient, The Other Side of Paradise offers a deep new understanding of a place that has so confounded and intrigued us.
Download or read book Beneath the Blue Planet written by Alex Brylske and published by Mango Media Inc.. This book was released on 2023-02-14 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Take a Deep Dive into the Secrets of Our Blue Planet "The author is one of the most experienced in the world. A fascinating and engaging toom. Well worth the read. A valued forever reference." —Amazon review #1 New Release in Scuba Travel Guides Venture into the thrilling realm of underwater exploration with Beneath the Blue Planet by the founders of the popular Reef Smart Guides series for snorkelers and scuba divers. A perfect travel gift for nature lovers and a rich source of shark facts, this book unearths the secrets of the ocean, from coral reefs to the world of deep diving. Dive into the ocean's untold stories. Discover the captivating universe that exists beneath the waves. From the diverse inhabitants of the coral reefs to the deepest, most mysterious corners of the ocean, Beneath the Blue Planet unveils everything you've ever wanted to know about our underwater world. Experience the thrill of ocean exploration. This immersive guide provides fascinating shark facts, explores the incredibly beautiful world of coral reefs, and encourages sustainable tourism for divers. Designed for anyone who loves the ocean, this book is a treasure trove of knowledge, making it an excellent travel gift for adventure seekers. Immerse yourself in Beneath the Blue Planet and: Unearth the hidden world of ocean reefs, and understand their essential role in marine ecosystems Gain invaluable insights into snorkeling and deep diving, enhancing your ocean exploration adventures Explore intriguing shark facts, providing a closer look at these fascinating marine creatures Discover practical ways to contribute to ocean conservation, turning your love for the seas into meaningful action If you've read Oceanology, National Geographic A Diver's Guide to the World, or100 Dives of a Lifetime, and are a fan of the Reef Smart Guides dive and snorkel travel series, you’ll love Beneath the Blue Planet.
