Download or read book The Ocean of Life written by Callum Roberts and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-05-24 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Silent Spring for oceans, written by "the Rachel Carson of the fish world" (The New York Times) Who can forget the sense of wonder with which they discovered the creatures of the deep? In this vibrant hymn to the sea, Callum Roberts—one of the world’s foremost conservation biologists—leads readers on a fascinating tour of mankind’s relationship to the sea, from the earliest traces of water on earth to the oceans as we know them today. In the process, Roberts looks at how the taming of the oceans has shaped human civilization and affected marine life. We have always been fish eaters, from the dawn of civilization, but in the last twenty years we have transformed the oceans beyond recognition. Putting our exploitation of the seas into historical context, Roberts offers a devastating account of the impact of modern fishing techniques, pollution, and climate change, and reveals what it would take to steer the right course while there is still time. Like Four Fish and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, The Ocean of Life takes a long view to tell a story in which each one of us has a role to play.
Download or read book The New Ocean The Fate of Life in a Changing Sea written by Bryn Barnard and published by Knopf Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating look at the future of our oceans—and how human actions may change them. The Earth—our home—is covered mostly with water: the wide, deep, salty, and very blue ocean. It regulates our climate in a way that makes life as we know it possible. This huge ocean is full of an amazing amount of life, most of which is too small to see. But life in the ocean is in trouble. The ocean is becoming hotter, more polluted, and, in places, empty of life. The right amount of warming is good for us, but too much warming is causing shifts that are not good for life in the ocean. Global warming, pollution, and overfishing are creating a New Ocean, in which life is changing drastically. This book tells the stories of the probable fates of six sea dwellers: jellyfish, orcas, sea turtles, tuna, corals, and blue-green algae. What becomes of them may help you understand what becomes of us. Praise for Bryn Barnard’s Outbreak! and Dangerous Planet: "An absorbing narrative that includes touches of humor. . . . Teachers will find many uses for this, but the book is so engaging it will also attract browsers—and hold them.” —Booklist, Starred “An engrossing introduction for young adult readers to the chillingly topical subject of man vs. microbe.” —The Wall Street Journal
Download or read book Imperiled Ocean written by Laura Trethewey and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a life raft in the Mediterranean, a teenager from Ghana wonders whether he will reach Europe alive. A young chef disappears from a cruise ship, leaving a mystery for his friends and family to solve. A water-squatting community battles eviction from a harbor in a Pacific Northwest town, raising the question of who owns the water. Imperiled Ocean is a deeply reported work of narrative journalism that follows people as they head out to sea. What they discover holds inspiring and dire implications for the life of the ocean, and for all of us back on land. As Imperiled Ocean unfolds, battles are fought, fortunes made, and lives are lost. Behind this human drama, the ocean is growing ever more unstable, threatening to upend life on land. We meet a biologist tracking sturgeon who is unable to stop the development and pollution destroying the fish’s habitat, he races to learn about the fish before it disappears. Sturgeon has survived more than 300 million years on earth and could hold important truths about how humanity might make itself amenable to a changing ocean. As a fisher and scientist, his ability to listen to the water becomes a parable for today. By eavesdropping on an imperiled world, he shows a way we can move forward to save the oceans we all share.
Download or read book The Attacking Ocean written by Brian Fagan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-08-19 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of climate change describes the dramatic evolution and stabilization of the oceans before the rise of humans approximately 6,000 years ago, tracing a significant rise in global temperatures since 1860 and how a rising sea level is affecting world populations.
Download or read book Sea Sick written by Alanna Mitchell and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2011-05-18 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All life — whether on land or in the sea — depends on the oceans for two things: • Oxygen. Most of Earth’s oxygen is produced by phytoplankton in the sea. These humble, one-celled organisms, rather than the spectacular rain forests, are the true lungs of the planet. • Climate control. Our climate is regulated by the ocean’s currents, winds, and water-cycle activity. Sea Sick is the first book to examine the current state of the world’s oceans — the great unexamined ecological crisis of the planet — and the fact that we are altering everything about them; temperature, salinity, acidity, ice cover, volume, circulation, and, of course, the life within them. Alanna Mitchell joins the crews of leading scientists in nine of the global ocean’s hotspots to see firsthand what is really happening around the world. Whether it’s the impact of coral reef bleaching, the puzzle of the oxygen-less dead zones such as the one in the Gulf of Mexico, or the shocking implications of the changing Ph balance of the sea, Mitchell explains the science behind the story to create an engaging, accessible yet authoritative account.
Download or read book Eat Like a Fish written by Bren Smith and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: JAMES BEARD AWARD WINNER IACP Cookbook Award finalist In the face of apocalyptic climate change, a former fisherman shares a bold and hopeful new vision for saving the planet: farming the ocean. Here Bren Smith—pioneer of regenerative ocean agriculture—introduces the world to a groundbreaking solution to the global climate crisis. A genre-defining “climate memoir,” Eat Like a Fish interweaves Smith’s own life—from sailing the high seas aboard commercial fishing trawlers to developing new forms of ocean farming to surfing the frontiers of the food movement—with actionable food policy and practical advice on ocean farming. Written with the humor and swagger of a fisherman telling a late-night tale, it is a powerful story of environmental renewal, and a must-read guide to saving our oceans, feeding the world, and—by creating new jobs up and down the coasts—putting working class Americans back to work.
Download or read book The World is Blue written by Sylvia A. Earle and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "... [L]egendary marine scientist Sylvia Earle portrays a global ecosystem on the brink of irreversible environmental crisis unless we act immediately. A Silent Spring for our era, this eloquent, urgent, fascinating book reveals how the past 50 years of destructive--and ever accelerating--oceanic change threaten the very existence of life on Earth." -- back cover.
Download or read book This New Ocean written by William E. Burrows and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2010-09-29 with total page 795 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was all part of man's greatest adventure--landing men on the Moon and sending a rover to Mars, finally seeing the edge of the universe and the birth of stars, and launching planetary explorers across the solar system to Neptune and beyond. The ancient dream of breaking gravity's hold and taking to space became a reality only because of the intense cold-war rivalry between the superpowers, with towering geniuses like Wernher von Braun and Sergei Korolyov shelving dreams of space travel and instead developing rockets for ballistic missiles and space spectaculars. Now that Russian archives are open and thousands of formerly top-secret U.S. documents are declassified, an often startling new picture of the space age emerges: the frantic effort by the Soviet Union to beat the United States to the Moon was doomed from the beginning by gross inefficiency and by infighting so treacherous that Winston Churchill likened it to "dogs fighting under a carpet"; there was more than science behind the United States' suggestion that satellites be launched during the International Geophysical Year, and in one crucial respect, Sputnik was a godsend to Washington; the hundred-odd German V-2s that provided the vital start to the U.S. missile and space programs legally belonged to the Soviet Union and were spirited to the United States in a derring-do operation worthy of a spy thriller; despite NASA's claim that it was a civilian agency, it had an intimate relationship with the military at the outset and still does--a distinction the Soviet Union never pretended to make; constant efforts to portray astronauts and cosmonauts as "Boy Scouts" were often contradicted by reality; the Apollo missions to the Moon may have been an unexcelled political triumph and feat of exploration, but they also created a headache for the space agency that lingers to this day. This New Ocean is based on 175 interviews with Russian and American scientists and engineers; on archival documents, including formerly top-secret National Intelligence Estimates and spy satellite pictures; and on nearly three decades of reporting. The impressive result is this fascinating story--the first comprehensive account--of the space age. Here are the strategists and war planners; engineers and scientists; politicians and industrialists; astronauts and cosmonauts; science fiction writers and journalists; and plain, ordinary, unabashed dreamers who wanted to transcend gravity's shackles for the ultimate ride. The story is written from the perspective of a witness who was present at the beginning and who has seen the conclusion of the first space age and the start of the second.
Download or read book Living with the Sea written by Mike Brown and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-03 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The seas and oceans are currently taking centre stage in academic study and public consciousness. From the plastics littering our seas, to the role of climate change on ocean currents from unequal access of marine resources to the treacherous experiences of seafarers who keep our global economy afloat; now is a crucial time to examine how we live with the sea. This ambitious book brings together an interdisciplinary and international cohort of contributors from within and beyond academia. It offers a range and diversity of insights unlike previous collections. An ‘oceanic turn’ is taking place, with a burgeoning of academic work that takes seriously the place of seas and oceans in understanding socio-cultural and political life, past and present. Yet, there is a significant gap concerning the ways in which we engage with seas and oceans, with a will to enliven action and evoke change. This book explores these challenges, offering insights from spatial planning, architectural design, geography, educational studies, anthropology and cultural studies. An examination through these lenses can help us to better understand human relationships with the seas and oceans, and promote an ethic of care for the future.
Download or read book Life in the Ocean written by Claire A. Nivola and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR). This book was released on 2012-03-13 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sylvia Earle first lost her heart to the ocean as a young girl when she discovered the wonders of the Gulf of Mexico in her backyard. As an adult, she dives even deeper. Whether she's designing submersibles, swimming with the whales, or taking deep-water walks, Sylvia Earle has dedicated her life to learning more about what she calls "the blue heart of the planet." With stunningly detailed pictures of the wonders of the sea, Life in the Ocean tells the story of Sylvia's growing passion and how her ocean exploration and advocacy have made her known around the world. This picture book biography also includes an informative author's note that will motivate young environmentalists. Life in the Ocean is one of The Washington Post's Best Kids Books of 2012
Download or read book The Empty Ocean written by Richard Ellis and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2013-03-19 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Empty Ocean, acclaimed author and artist Richard Ellis tells the story of our continued plunder of life in the sea and weighs the chances for its recovery. Through fascinating portraits of a wide array of creatures, he introduces us to the many forms of sea life that humans have fished, hunted, and collected over the centuries, from charismatic whales and dolphins to the lowly menhaden, from sea turtles to cod, tuna, and coral. Rich in history, anecdote, and surprising fact, Richard Ellis’s descriptions bring to life the natural history of the various species, the threats they face, and the losses they have suffered. Killing has occurred on a truly stunning scale, with extinction all too often the result, leaving a once-teeming ocean greatly depleted. But the author also finds instances of hope and resilience, of species that have begun to make remarkable comebacks when given the opportunity. Written with passion and grace, and illustrated with Richard Ellis’s own drawings, The Empty Ocean brings to a wide audience a compelling view of the damage we have caused to life in the sea and what we can do about it. "
Download or read book Future Sea written by Deborah Rowan Wright and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A counterintuitive and compelling argument that existing laws already protect the entirety of our oceans—and a call to understand and enforce those protections. The world’s oceans face multiple threats: the effects of climate change, pollution, overfishing, plastic waste, and more. Confronted with the immensity of these challenges and of the oceans themselves, we might wonder what more can be done to stop their decline and better protect the sea and marine life. Such widespread environmental threats call for a simple but significant shift in reasoning to bring about long-overdue, elemental change in the way we use ocean resources. In Future Sea, ocean advocate and marine-policy researcher Deborah Rowan Wright provides the tools for that shift. Questioning the underlying philosophy of established ocean conservation approaches, Rowan Wright lays out a radical alternative: a bold and far-reaching strategy of 100 percent ocean protection that would put an end to destructive industrial activities, better safeguard marine biodiversity, and enable ocean wildlife to return and thrive along coasts and in seas around the globe. Future Sea is essentially concerned with the solutions and not the problems. Rowan Wright shines a light on existing international laws intended to keep marine environments safe that could underpin this new strategy. She gathers inspiring stories of communities and countries using ocean resources wisely, as well as of successful conservation projects, to build up a cautiously optimistic picture of the future for our oceans—counteracting all-too-prevalent reports of doom and gloom. A passionate, sweeping, and personal account, Future Sea not only argues for systemic change in how we manage what we do in the sea but also describes steps that anyone, from children to political leaders (or indeed, any reader of the book), can take toward safeguarding the oceans and their extraordinary wildlife.
Download or read book Future Of Marine Life In A Changing Ocean The The Fate Of Marine Organisms And Processes Under Climate Change And Other Types Of Human Perturbation written by M Debora Iglesias-rodriguez and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2019-12-24 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together the state of our knowledge on the interactions between climate change and marine biota. It focusses broadly on the environmental stressors during the Anthropocene period; when human activities started to have a significant global impact on earth's geological imprint and ecosystems. This period of rapid change is accompanied by rising carbon dioxide levels, increasing global temperatures, loss of oxygen in aquatic systems, and the fast release of pollutants into the environment among many other environmental stressors originating from large scale human activities, such as widespread overfishing.The Future of Marine Life in a Changing Ocean starts by providing the reader with a brief background on fundamental concepts in ocean science and climate. It then moves on to a brief description of recent changes in marine chemistry such as ocean acidification, a decline in oxygen levels in the oceans, ocean warming, and marine pollution, with some examples of shifts in ecosystem diversity. The chapters discuss these topics in the context of how a changing ocean impacts ecosystem health, the biological carbon pump, the sequestration of carbon dioxide from the surface ocean into the deep sea, and the perceived notion of the ocean's unlimited resilience to maintain its role as a 'carbon reservoir'. Topics include threats to marine diversity, ecosystem function, latitudinal shifts in productivity and diversity, and changes in global cycling of elements such as carbon. It concludes with an analysis of the impact of climate change on food security.Written for undergraduate and graduate students, and researchers in the natural and social sciences, this book provides a science background to study environmental change in marine ecosystems as well as a science framework to study policy, marine law and the economics of climate change. This book is an essential read for anyone hoping to understand key challenges facing our oceans.
Download or read book Smithsonian Ocean written by Deborah Cramer and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2008-10-07 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nobel Prize winner Al Gore wrote of Deborah Cramer's previous book Great Waters, "I urge everyone to read this book, to act on its message, and to pass on its teachings." Now Cramer offers a groundbreaking book for an even more urgent time. Our lives depend on the sea. As gifted science writer Deborah Cramer makes clear in this extraordinary volume, the ocean has been earth's lifeline for more than three and a half billion years. Life began in the scalding inferno of deep-sea hot springs. The first cell, the first plant, and the first animal were all born in the sea. Climate changes wrought by the sea created evolutionary pathways for mammals and gave rise to our human ancestors some 200,000 years ago. The one, interconnected sea still sustains us. Invisible plants in the ocean's sunlit surface give us air to breathe. Rushing currents supply water to the atmosphere's protective greenhouse and rain to dry land. But as Cramer reveals in this sweeping look at earth's biography, the vital partnership between earth and the life it nourishes has recently been disrupted. Today, a single terrestrial species, man, has begun to alter the health of the sea itself. The mark of humans on the seas is now everywhere—from the fertile waters of continental shelves to the icy reaches of the poles, from the dazzling diversity of coral reefs to the porous edge of estuaries. Even the open ocean bears clear traces of our harmful ways. Scientists believe human impact may have already sparked a catastrophic event that could change the sea and the earth irrevocably: the sixth mass planetary extinction on a scale unseen since the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But unlike the forces that caused previous extinctions, humankind can make a choice. We can choose the mark we wish to make and the legacy we leave behind. Written in the passionate tradition of Rachel Carson, Smithsonian Ocean is at once a book for our time and for the ages. Carson wrote: "One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself: What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?" Cramer's powerful and inspiring message is equally a wake-up call: "We hold earth's life-giving waters—and our future—in our hands." Our lives depend on the sea.
Download or read book Sea Wife written by Amity Gaige and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book of the Year “Brilliantly breathes life not only into the perils of living at sea, but also into the hidden dangers of domesticity, parenthood, and marriage. What a smart, swift, and thrilling novel.” —Lauren Groff, author of Florida Juliet is failing to juggle motherhood and her stalled-out dissertation on confessional poetry when her husband, Michael, informs her that he wants to leave his job and buy a sailboat. With their two kids—Sybil, age seven, and George, age two—Juliet and Michael set off for Panama, where their forty-four foot sailboat awaits them. The initial result is transformative; the marriage is given a gust of energy, Juliet emerges from her depression, and the children quickly embrace the joys of being at sea. The vast horizons and isolated islands offer Juliet and Michael reprieve – until they are tested by the unforeseen. A transporting novel about marriage, family and love in a time of unprecedented turmoil, Sea Wife is unforgettable in its power and astonishingly perceptive in its portrayal of optimism, disillusionment, and survival.
Download or read book Planet Ocean written by Patricia Newman and published by Millbrook Press ™. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Books like this one help lead the way to a better climate future for all inhabitants of Mother Earth. We are all in this together!" — Jeff Bridges, Academy Award winner and environmentalist A little more than 70 percent of Planet Earth is ocean. So wouldn’t a better name for our global home be Planet Ocean? You may be surprised at just how closely YOU are connected to the ocean. Regardless of where you live, every breath you take and every drop of water you drink links you to the ocean. And because of this connection, the ocean’s health affects all of us. Dive in with author Patricia Newman and photographer Annie Crawley—visit the Coral Triangle near Indonesia, the Salish Sea in the Pacific Northwest, and the Arctic Ocean at the top of the world. Find out about problems including climate change, ocean acidification, and plastic pollution, and meet inspiring local people who are leading the way to reverse the ways in which humans have harmed the ocean. Planet Ocean shows us how to stop thinking of ourselves as existing separate from the ocean and how to start taking better care of this precious resource.
Download or read book Dark Side of the Ocean The Destruction of Our Seas Why It Matters and What We Can Do About It written by Albert Bates and published by GroundSwell Books. This book was released on 2020-08-19 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our oceans face levels of devastation previously unknown in human history--from pollution, from overfishing, and through damage to delicate aquatic ecosystems affected by global warming. Ocean biodiversity is being decimated on par with the fastest rates of rain forest destruction. More than 80 per cent of pollutants in the oceans come from sewage and other land-based runoff (some of it radioactive). The rest is created by waste dumped by commercial and recreational vessels. In many areas and for many fish stocks, there are no conservation or management measures existing or even planned. Climate author Albert Bates explains how ocean life maintains adequate oxygen levels, prevents erosion from storms, and sustains a vital food source that factory fishing operations cannot match--and why that should matter to all of us, whether we live near the ocean or not. He presents solutions for changing the human impact on marine reserves, improving ocean permaculture, and putting the brakes on the ocean heat waves that destroy sea life and imperil human habitation at the ocean's edge.