SUGGESTED READINGS

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In a Perfect Ocean:  the State of Fisheries and Exosystems in the North Atlantic

“In a perfect world, Pauly and Maclean would have written In a Perfect Ocean long ago, and thus helped forestall the catastrophic declines in ocean systems now underway. Destined to be a classic scientific work, but with the appeal of a compelling detective story, this extraordinary book ranks as a “must read” for anyone who cares about the future of the sea.”

Dr. Sylvia Earle
Explorer in Residence, National Geographic Society

Oceans 2020:  Science, Trends, and the Challenge of Sustainability

“Oceans 2020 is an outstanding effort to bring together science, history, and socio-economics to understand and protect the world’s oceans. IOC, SCOR, and SCOPE should be congratulated for bringing together the leaders in their fields to create this valuable book for the field of oceanography and for the broader goal of human society learning to live in harmony with the oceans.”

Dr. Charles F. Kennel
Director of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the UC, San Diego

Blue Frontier: Saving America's Living Seas

"The most comprehensive account available of the state of our nation's oceans . . ."
Bill McKibben
Author of The End of Nature

"An infuriating portrayal of mankind's most breathtaking crime, the destruction of the oceans that birthed our species."
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Blue Planet

Published in conjunction with the BBC/Discovery Channel special of the same name, this stunning new book reveals the secrets of our water planet. When viewed from space, Earth, 70 percent of which is covered with water, appears blue. Only 1 percent of these vast oceans has been studied, and these mysteries and discoveries are discussed in seven chapters. The first chapters explain the mechanics of the water planet, including the chemistry of water; the interactions of atmosphere and ocean; and how water moves in waves, currents, and tides. The remaining sections discuss the different realms of the oceans: the seas of the tropics, temperate regions, and the poles; the open oceans far from land; and the deep-sea regions. The plant and animal life adapted to each environment are depicted in beautiful photographs, and more information appears in sidebars. The informative text is conversational and highly readable and extensively illustrated with maps, illustrations, charts, and photographs, many of which show rarely seen creatures.

Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association

Listening to the Sea: The Politics of Improving Environmental Protection

The author's many years of research, love, and respect for the sea and his keen desire to construct a more rational regime for ocean governance are apparent throughout this book. Wilder contributes to the fields of legal scholarship and political science by tracing the historical development of customary doctrines, landmark decisions, and major environmental legislation and treaties pertaining to oil and gas development, fisheries conservation, and jurisdiction over resources. Although portions of several chapters originally appeared in leading law reviews and yearbooks, the author creates a newly integrated and holistic approach for oceans governance by designing a "seastate" that features integrated coastal management with the sharing of power and decision-making between federal and state governments. Arguing strongly for the need to protect biodiversity in the marine environment as well as on land, he offers such solutions as pollution prevention, industrial networking, and the reduction of energy demands. Wilder concludes with recommendations and principles that will constitute a framework for a more refined kind of ocean governance. Recommended for academic libraries, law libraries, and environmental collections.

Margaret Ann Aycock
Gulf Coast Environmental Lib., Beaumont, TX  
 Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc

Heal the Ocean: Solutions for Saving Our Seas

An oil tanker breaks up off the coast of Spain, contaminating beaches and killing over one hundred thousand birds. Colorful coral reefs turn a deathly white around the world. Six whales die in the Bahamas from bleeding near their ears after the Navy tests an active sonar system there. After so much bad news, people are thirsting for workable solutions to the oceans crisis.
Heal the Ocean provides a refreshing change in the literature by emphasizing success stories in the struggle to save the seas. The author-a marine ecologist dedicated to protecting and restoring ocean ecosystems-first describes the nature of ocean environments and then discusses current and emerging threats, including pollution, overfishing, poor land use, deep sea mining, and the search for new energy sources. Heal the Ocean then urges that we build upon efforts that have successfully countered such threats, including:

• allowing natural processes to restore the San Francisco Bay and Delta
  innovative wastewater treatment at Ecoparque, Baja, California (the world's first scientifically designed marine reserve network in California's Channel Islands)
  
• traditional stewardship of land and sea by native Hawaiians
  
• economic incentives for sustainable fishing in Alaska
  
• new international fishing agreements with teeth
  
• shifting consumer demand to sustainable seafood
  
• building constituencies for ocean conservation and creating a new ocean ethic using sophisticated social marketing and community-building techniques

Upbeat and inspiring, Heal the Ocean will appeal to professional environmental advocates, community leaders, opinion-shapers, and policymakers, as well as any citizen aspiring to protect the ocean.
 
Rod Fujita is a Senior Scientist with Environmental Defense, in Oakland, California.
He has studied the ocean for over twenty years, logging hundreds of hours underwater studying ocean wildlife, as well as playing a key role in setting up marine reserves in the Florida Keys and the Channel Islands, California.

Ocean Bankruptcy: World Fisheries on the Brink of Disaster

Book Description
This breakthrough book describes the games that nations and organizations play in order to exploit the ocean's migratory fishery resources in the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Mediterranean waters. It examines the attitudes and actions of different countries, fishermen, and consumers, all lobbying for greater allocations for themselves while the supply is being rapidly depleted. Stephen Sloan weaves together his provable theory that the oceans are being depleted three times faster than is reported by scientists. He uses simple formulas and addresses what the numbers mean in a biological ecological sense, and whether they match up with those found in statistical reports.

OCEAN BANKRUPTCY offers a fresh look into world conservation. The author tells this unique story through accounts of international meetings of government delegations, lobbyists, special interest groups, and nongovernmental environmental organizations, along with other fisheries groups. The book utilizes nonscientific jargon that appeals to the large number of people who are concerned about the health of our oceans, and ultimately, the health of our planet.

"Sloan's re-formatting of what is essentially deadly committee-report content into a compelling conservation brief is accomplished journalism in itself. His argument and even its failures are accessible to an interested lay audience as well as to the choir of sportfishing conservation interests opposing commercial overfishing."

Publishers Weekly

The Empty Ocean

It is also a splendid example of history illuminating ecology, with well-chosen facts that enable us to picture a largely invisible catastrophe.
The New York Times Book Review

"As the human population has increased, the marine population has plummeted, and Ellis tells the complex story behind this equation for disaster with a vast array of facts, unfailing eloquence, and bracing frankness."
Booklist

"Read this book and be inspired, informed, and entertained, but watch out. The latest, most powerful tribute to the sea by Richard Ellis could forever change the way you think about the ocean, about yourself, and about the future we share with the sea."

Sylvia Earle
Explorer in Residence
National Geographic

Book Description
Through photography and powerful written reflections, Water Culture inspires awareness of our behavior and practices in the realm of water. Water Culture features a kaleidoscope of the elemental qualities of water in a series of photographs that are breathtaking to behold in their fantasy and equilibrium. This book depicts the precious element of water in a state of beauty and tragedy combining staggering facts alongside Q&A interviews with leading figures in the environmental movement. Water Culture features the works of over 80 photographers, including David Doubliet, Andreas Gursky, Nan Goldin, and Mario Sorrenti and interviews with eminent world leaders in the environmental field--Mikhail Gorbachev, Jimmy Carter, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., among them.

Water Culture is dedicated to The International Year of Freshwater 2003. Jean-Michel Cousteau, the eldest son of the late ocean explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau and founder of Ocean Futures Society, is the book’s leading author. Photographs and interviews have been selected by Francesca Sorrenti and Marisha Shibuya of SKE GROUP in collaboration with Ocean Futures Society.

Mapping The Deep: The Extraordinary Story Of Ocean Science>

Like the oceans themselves, Kunzig's book is large and contains multitudes . . . . Compelling.
The Guardian, Jon Turney

When you head for the coast this summer, leave that trashy beach novel at home. Instead, pack Robert Kunzig's book.
Phillip Manning
 The News and Observer, Raleigh, North Carolina

[Kunzig] covers vast tracts of time and space and makes his subjects electrifying.
Richard Ellis
The Times [London]

The Universe Below: Discovering the Secrets of the Deep Sea

By combining personal experience, conversations with scientists and a wide-ranging historical review, [Broad] has given us a readable and reliable guide to the last great wilderness on earth....A splendid guide to this ultimate terra incognita.
John Durant
The New York Times Book Review

...a fascinating, beautifully written account of a truly unfamiliar world.
David Pawson
The Washington Post Book World

Broad's sense of wonderment is almost always infectious.
The New Yorker

Encyclopedia of the Sea

Written by a marine expert and author of several previous books on the sea, this encyclopedia is intended for a general audience. The alphabetically arranged entries are concise and well written, averaging a paragraph in length.The range of topics covered is broad, encompassing wildlife (Albatross, Giant clam, Sperm whale), plants (Kelp, Sargassum weed), geographic features (Bruny Island, Weddell Sea), historical events (Cod wars, Lusitania), the environment (Exxon Valdez, Greenpeace), and myths and legends (Atlantis, Mermaids). This volume also provides brief biographies of historical figures (Blackbeard; Magellan, Ferdinand) as well as contemporary people (Cousteau, Jacques-Yves; Watson, Paul). All forms of marine life are covered, from bacteria to whales. The most well known, most important, and most unusual species out of the many thousands of possible choices were selected for inclusion.

The author, a well-known marine artist in addition to being a writer, has depicted selected organisms with 8 pages of color paintings and more than 450 other illustrations.There are numerous cross-references from one entry to another that should serve the casual reader well. For use as a library reference source, however, this encyclopedia could use either an index, a more comprehensive cross-reference system, or a different arrangement. For example, the cross reference under Whale reads "See also individual whales and dolphins." Users looking for information on individual whales and dolphins, therefore, would need to know the common names of these animals (for example, Ganges River dolphin, Indo-Pacific beaked whale).Nevertheless, this volume is well worth the price and is recommended for academic, public, and high-school libraries. There is no current single-volume encyclopedia that covers the same topics.

RBB
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

National Geographic Atlas of the Ocean:
The Deep Frontier

Book Description
Internationally renowned deep-sea pioneer and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Sylvia A. Earle, in consultation with experts from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is our peerless guide. This one-of-a-kind atlas immerses us in the infinite wonders of the world offshore through more than 150 cutting-edge maps, photographs, and satellite images. Atlas of the Ocean lays bare a realm as challenging and untapped as space—and as vital to our existence as the air we breathe.

Accompanying exquisite, up-to-the-minute maps, Earle’s compelling text reveals the beauty and complexity of the ocean structure—past, present, and future—and explores its flora, fauna, and diverse phenomena, from giant squid and kelp to the smallest microbial bodies. Fascinating point maps take us into the planet’s deepest abyss, the Mariana Trench; along the planet’s longest mountain chain, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge; on the migration route of humpback whales; and to a host of marine sanctuaries worldwide. An unequaled resource for both education and entertainment, Atlas of the Ocean also explores the progress of fascinating technological developments that will help scientists discover the ocean’s innumerable uncharted regions and life-forms.

The Future of U.S. Ocean Policy: Choices for a New Century

Following an introductory chapter that reviews national ocean policy and the process by which it is made, the authors: review the history of development of U.S. ocean and coastal policy examine the major ocean laws enacted in the 1970s and review and assess their record of implementation examine factors that will affect U.S. ocean policy in the coming decade discuss the need to make policy more coherent, and to develop institutional mechanisms that can foster more effective guidance and oversight present a set of policy options for improving U.S. ocean policy.

The Future of U.S. Ocean Policy is the only recent book that focuses on national ocean policy in its entirety, and will play an important role in upcoming debates concerning the future direction of policy initiatives. Agency personnel, members and staff of nongovernmental organizations, industry groups, Congressional staffers, state and local government officials, academics, and concerned citizens will find the book an invaluable guide, as will students and faculty in courses in marine and coastal management and in environmental management.