Seas the Day™!

Inspiration and information to protect Our
Ocean

Each month in 2006, The Ocean Project will highlight 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.

Ocean's End , by Colin Woodward
If you have already read about the woes facing our ocean and have seen some if it firsthand, this book may not be for you. Otherwise, if you are interested in learning more about how our ocean, despite its vastness, is under severe stress all over the world from human pressures, this is a hard-hitting book that might be for you.

Colin Woodward's Ocean's End takes you on a thorough and personal look at the all-too-real destruction that the world's ocean faces, from Belize to the Black Sea. For example, Woodward describes how a relatively pristine wonderful coral reef off the mangrove-forested coast of Belize was once teeming with hundreds of species of fish and other sea creatures. This attracted a parade of scuba divers, sport fishermen, underwater photographers, and other types of people – most with very good intentions – who were interested in enjoying or somehow otherwise consuming the beautiful location. The market for profit was easy to spot, so of course an airstrip was added to draw in further crowds. A hotel, then a seawall, then a golf course, and then a desalinization plant quickly followed; and in no time at all, the once beautiful reef had become a dead reef in an unhealthy patch of sea.

Woodward, a science journalist, has put together a sobering collection of observations from his travels on the world's ocean. In short, the news is anything but good. The “crime scenes” that Woodward visits range around the globe. From the Black Sea of Eurasia, once a thriving extension of the Atlantic Ocean and now all but destroyed by overfishing, oil spills, industrial discharges, nutrient pollution, wetlands destruction, and a host of other problems; to the South Pacific, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Antarctic; it becomes chillingly clear that there is not a safe place on our entire planet from the destructive pressures that mankind creates.

Woodward's message is one that needs to be heard: The world's ocean, as seemingly incomprehensively vast as it is, is indeed finite and destructible. All around the globe, in very short periods of time, significant ecological transformations are occurring. These are dangerous to the health of the biosphere, and some are perhaps irreversible. Woodward drives home the point that if we are to have any hope of saving our ocean – and ourselves – we must act quickly to stop the demise of the world's ocean, before it really is too late.

Learn more about our ocean and the interconnectedness of life at The Ocean Project's website.
Find out how you can help at the Seas the Day website. Each month features a new conservation theme, and offers a variety of tangible ways you can make a real difference.
If you're interested in reading this book, please visit your local library.
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If you have any suggestions for a future “Ocean Book of the Month”, please let us know. Send us your favorite recent or not-so-recent read so we can share it with all!

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