The Unnatural History of the Sea

“This book goes through the sequence of events that led us to today’s depleted ocean. It takes you back to a time when people believed the oceans were essentially inexhaustible…I should point out that he does take an optimistic outlook. He isn’t all doom and gloom. He lays out hundreds and hundreds of years of over-exploitation but he also lays out his manifesto for restoring some of that former glory. He doesn’t think it’s too late.” Read more...

The best books on Ocean Life

Helen Scales, Biologist

“One of the points this book makes is that it’s dangerous to talk about one species in isolation because if you take out one species that might have ongoing effects on the habitat. You need to look at what’s happening around that population – you might get growth of algae, or a rise in population of jellyfish or something like that. That is certainly happening around the world. So he talks again about how large populations of fish existed around North America and Europe and how the belief developed that the supplies were inexhaustible, even up to the mid-20th century. He puts that picture well, but then he says that now we know that all the major commercial fish populations are in trouble, we’ve probably got until about 2050 to be harvesting wild fish.” Read more...

The best books on The Sea

Denise Russell, Philosopher