Ocean Book of the Month
Every month, The Ocean Project highlights a book focused on our blue planet or environmental sustainability. Books for all age groups will be covered, non-fiction and fiction, prose and poetry. If you have a suggestion, please let us know.
Sea Change: A Message of the Oceans
by Sylvia Earle
Although Sylvia Earle has accomplished much since her writing of Sea Change, her book is well worth a second or third read whenever one doubts the potential of a human spirit to drive passionate change on behalf of all in one lifetime. Sylvia has earned her opinions through a life spent as intimately within the ocean as humanly possible, and we all can relive it vicariously to engage ourselves better with the plight of the world ocean. Sylvia walks us through many of the emotions and discoveries of human exploration in extreme conditions — letting us feel that sense of discovery that space travel promises, and yet pointing out how accessible new discoveries are still to us on our own home planet. Sylvia takes us along for the ride of the trials, tribulations and wonderous serendipities of a career tied dearly to the time period of her life.
In Sea Change, Dr. Earle writes about disturbing trends in ocean deterioration that resonate similarly to what Rachel Carson was able to accomplish for the above water world with her groundbreaking book, Silent Spring. But since we all experience Rachel's world on a daily basis just walking about in daily life, Sylvia's book engages us with the wonders of ecosystems we rarely think about unless we educate ourselves and actually look below the water — she takes us along for the ride with the care to point out every wonder she personally experienced first-hand through the marvels of many new technologies — some that she helped create — to permit her strong desire to be underwater at deeper and deeper depths.
Longitude Books suggests:
"A tribute to our watery planet — and real-life adventure story by Sylvia Earle, a World Wildlife Fund national council member and diving pioneer. In this book she introduces us to marine biology and recounts her many exploits underwater. Former chief scientist of NOAA (the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration), Earle has become our ambassador-at-large for the world's oceans. Using many examples of contemporary threats to the health of the world's oceans in this lively book, she takes us to the fish markets of Tokyo, sight of the Valdez disaster in Prince William Sound, and to the Persian Gulf. The book concludes with a detailed, constructive plan of what we must do to preserve our ocean resources."
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Find out how you can help do your part at the Seas the Day action pages.
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Check out a Sylvia A. Earle home page.
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If you are interested in reading this book but also want to be a conscious consumer, please visit your local library and check it out.
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If you're interested in purchasing this book, and then perhaps passing it along to a friend to spread the word, we encourage you to buy locally and from an independent bookseller. Please click on one of the two logos below to purchase a good read and help The Ocean Project.
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