Category Archives: Oceans & Water
Island Press Staff Picks
This week’s staff pick is from Island Press’s publicity manager, Jaime Jennings.
She writes:
In my almost six years at Island Press, I’ve had the opportunity to work on more than 90 titles ranging from conservation to the built environment. Of those titles, my favorite has been The Unnatural History of the Sea by Callum Roberts. I enjoyed it for many reasons but chief among them was the writing and the story. I’ve always been most drawn and inspired by stories about our oceans and Callum’s vast narrative illuminates a history of how we’ve destroyed them with centuries of disregard and overfishing. I came away from the book both deeply disappointed in human behavior and yet inspired by recent steps to protect the oceans. From chapter 1, he takes the reader on a time-traveling journey where I was immersed in fish markets, stood on the bowels of ships and dove under the frothy ocean surface to discover treasures below. What makes this book special is how Callum’s own voice along with photos paint an illuminating picture of what the oceans once were and what they could be again. With such a prized book, it was rewarding to see this book’s unique qualities recognized when the Washington Post named it one of the ten best books of 2007 saying, “passionate and immensely important…Callum Roberts has issued a powerful, galvanizing call to arms.”
Enjoy the excerpt below!
Introducing Island Press Staff Picks
The 30 of us here at Island Press work on all stages of book publishing: from concept and manuscript development in the editorial department to outreach and promotions in the marketing and publicity department. Our program and fundraising staff develop initiatives to complement our books and authors. And the finished product can’t happen without the production department designing covers and interiors, proofreading, and typesetting. All of this depends on the financial department, which tells us how much we can and can’t spend.
Water Experts Peter Gleick and Robert Glennon in Last Call at the Oasis
Island Press authors Peter Gleick and Robert Glennon lend their expertise to this new movie about our most valuable resource. Last Call at the Oasis premiered last weekend and is in theaters nationwide.
In the Case of Tar Sands Oil – Oils Well, Will Certainly Not End Well
Canada’s growing interest in exporting some of the dirtiest crude oil in the world is a threat to not only North America’s wildlife but also a rational energy policy and a stable atmosphere. NASA and climate scientist James Hansen called this project a climate game-changer because burning Alberta “tar sands” oil could raise CO2 levels in the atmosphere by 200 parts per million (ppm), pushing us dangerously away from the 350 ppm safety net that he and other scientists have recommend (we are currently at 390 ppm of CO2 and rising at about 1-2 ppm per year).
If President Obama approves the proposed pipeline connecting the Alberta tar sands to refineries in the Gulf Coast (over 1700 miles away), it will show that oil runs thicker than environmental and human health concerns. The so-called Keystone XL pipeline may only be the beginning of more such projects to come. Another pipeline, known as the Enbridge (named for the oil company) pipeline, would connect Alberta tar sands oil with refineries in coastal BC, traversing First Nation’s and other pristine lands over a distance of nearly 800 miles.
To extract the tar sands oil, hot freshwater is combined with caustic soda and mixed with petro-laden sands dug out of the earth by giant excavating shovels. Boreal forests that get in the way are leveled in the process. The slurry is then piped to extraction areas where oil is skimmed off the top and toxic tailings sent to ponds where they pose wildlife hazards. The resulting process has been labeled the dirtiest oil on earth not only because it requires 2-5 barrels of freshwater for every barrel of bitumen (crude) extracted, but because in the extraction process 10-45% more greenhouse gas pollutants are emitted. The oil then needs to be shipped long distances via subsurface pipelines, introducing ground disturbances and possible pipeline leaks to farmlands, forests, and wildlife migratory pathways, including those of the endangered whooping crane. On July 27, 2010 an Enbridge pipeline spewed 800,000 gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo River (largest spill in Midwest history) and on July 2, 2011 a pipeline operated by Exxon Mobil leaked unknown quantities of oil into the pristine Yellowstone River causing local evacuations.
There is no denial that the topic of the moment, whether on Main Street, Wall Street, or the Halls of Congress, is jobs. And while the oil business generates thousands of jobs, it comes with a high cost to future jobs, future economies, life-giving freshwater, boreal forests, and marine life (should a spill occur). What would tomorrow’s labor force think of our quest today for jobs if myopic decisions set the stage for oil spills that will decimate commercial fishing, tourism, marine life, and freshwater?
Simply put, the more we depend on fossil fuel extraction, the further we are from transitioning to sane, rational, and sustainable connections to the very basic life-giving provisions in the natural world that sustain us. Nature has limits, our atmosphere has limits; inevitably, water will someday be worth far more than oil. Destroying boreal forests to extract oil, which absorb massive amounts of carbon, will also add to greenhouse gas pollutants, raising our procrastination penalty even further.
President Obama can block this project. For the plan to go forward, the President must sign off on it (and Congress has no role in that decision). This is a critical test for an administration that has so far failed to show the strong leadership on environmental issues that the nation—and voters—expected. Conservation groups have been protesting in front of the White House to make their point about dirty oil being a threat to the nation’s environmental security and that this pipeline is just bad politics (for more information go to www.350.org). The insatiable demand for fossil fuels by the US as well as China (which is the destination of much of the oil from tar sands) will someday come back to haunt us as it already has in the case of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and other tragic oil spills. Ultimately, maybe the dinosaurs will have the last laugh, as we liberate extracted molecules from their long-decayed buried bodies that now trap sunlight and cook the planet!
Dominick A. DellaSala is chief scientist and president of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and president of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology. He is the author of Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World: Ecology and Conservation.
About Dominick A. DellaSala
Dominick A. DellaSala is Chief Scientist and President of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and President of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology.
Battling for Bimini
Bimini has become a battleground between the forces of coastal development and mangrove protection. A huge resort development on the western side of the island has chomped through large swathes of mangroves and threatened marine habitats with a blanket of silt. I wanted to see the battle zone at first hand—and had an unexpected demonstration of how vigilant the protectors of mangroves have to be. . . Read more »
Young lemon sharks use mangroves as a nursery area. Photo by Matthew Potenski.
About Kennedy Warne
Kennedy Warne co-founded New Zealand Geographic magazine in 1988, and served as the magazine’s editor until 2004, when he relinquished the editorship in order to pursue his own writing and photography. He has written for National Geographic, Smithsonian, Canadian Geographic, GEO and various travel publications, and continues to contribute regularly to New Zealand Geographic. He writes mostly about natural history subjects, and specializes in underwater assignments. His work for National Geographic has taken him from the sea ice of the Gulf of St Lawrence to the mangrove swamps of Bangladesh; from the rainforests of Fiordland to the kelp forests of Cape Town. His book Roads Less Travelled: Twenty Years of Exploration with New Zealand Geographic is published by Penguin (NZ) in September 2008. He lives in Auckland.
Tagging Lemons
The role of mangroves as vital nursery habitat for fish is nowhere more evident than in the tiny island of Bimini, off the coast of Florida. Female lemon sharks come to the sheltered lagoon waters to give birth, and the pups live amongst the tangled roots of mangroves, safe from the attention of predators, until they are about three feet long and have a better chance of survival in the open sea. A long-term research program in Bimini is revealing just how important mangroves are in the lives of these sharks, and I turned up right in the middle of the annual population census. This gave me the chance to see how the researchers—a happy band of shark-mad volunteers—go about their work. . . Read more »
Shark census volunteer Hollie Neibert with a lemon shark she has just removed from the net. Photo by Kennedy Warne.
About Kennedy Warne
Kennedy Warne co-founded New Zealand Geographic magazine in 1988, and served as the magazine’s editor until 2004, when he relinquished the editorship in order to pursue his own writing and photography. He has written for National Geographic, Smithsonian, Canadian Geographic, GEO and various travel publications, and continues to contribute regularly to New Zealand Geographic. He writes mostly about natural history subjects, and specializes in underwater assignments. His work for National Geographic has taken him from the sea ice of the Gulf of St Lawrence to the mangrove swamps of Bangladesh; from the rainforests of Fiordland to the kelp forests of Cape Town. His book Roads Less Travelled: Twenty Years of Exploration with New Zealand Geographic is published by Penguin (NZ) in September 2008. He lives in Auckland.
Travels with Mr. Burns
Sometimes you can push hard on doors of opportunity and they remain steadfastly closed. That was my experience in Cuba, where for innumerable reasons the careful plans I had laid kept being upended by unseen events. But the compensations of travel in this fascinating country are great—not least encountering its pervasive political messaging system. . . Read more »
Despite his best efforts, Juan Carlos keeps getting the message: 'Access denied.' Photo by Kenney Warne.
About Kennedy Warne
Kennedy Warne co-founded New Zealand Geographic magazine in 1988, and served as the magazine’s editor until 2004, when he relinquished the editorship in order to pursue his own writing and photography. He has written for National Geographic, Smithsonian, Canadian Geographic, GEO and various travel publications, and continues to contribute regularly to New Zealand Geographic. He writes mostly about natural history subjects, and specializes in underwater assignments. His work for National Geographic has taken him from the sea ice of the Gulf of St Lawrence to the mangrove swamps of Bangladesh; from the rainforests of Fiordland to the kelp forests of Cape Town. His book Roads Less Travelled: Twenty Years of Exploration with New Zealand Geographic is published by Penguin (NZ) in September 2008. He lives in Auckland.
To the Bat Cave
One of the mangrove-related creatures I hoped to see in Cuba was the fishing bat, which takes small fish from the surface waters of wetland ponds in swooping aerial dives. While waiting for nightfall, when the bats are active, I visited a cave where another species, the butterfly bat, pours out of its roosts by the tens of thousands—a squeaking, fluttering horde. . . Read more »
With a wingspan of about 12 cm, the butterfly bat is said to be the smallest in the world. Photo by Kennedy Warne.
About Kennedy Warne
Kennedy Warne co-founded New Zealand Geographic magazine in 1988, and served as the magazine’s editor until 2004, when he relinquished the editorship in order to pursue his own writing and photography. He has written for National Geographic, Smithsonian, Canadian Geographic, GEO and various travel publications, and continues to contribute regularly to New Zealand Geographic. He writes mostly about natural history subjects, and specializes in underwater assignments. His work for National Geographic has taken him from the sea ice of the Gulf of St Lawrence to the mangrove swamps of Bangladesh; from the rainforests of Fiordland to the kelp forests of Cape Town. His book Roads Less Travelled: Twenty Years of Exploration with New Zealand Geographic is published by Penguin (NZ) in September 2008. He lives in Auckland.
Bonefishing in Las Salinas
The Zapata wetland is one of the prime destinations for anglers who target the feisty, fast-swimming bonefish. My guide and I spent a morning cruising the shallows of an area called Las Salinas with an angler who knew where the best place for bonefish was: around the roots of mangroves. . . Read more »
Fishing-guide Marco casts a fly near a clump of red mangrove. Photo by Kennedy Warne.
About Kennedy Warne
Kennedy Warne co-founded New Zealand Geographic magazine in 1988, and served as the magazine’s editor until 2004, when he relinquished the editorship in order to pursue his own writing and photography. He has written for National Geographic, Smithsonian, Canadian Geographic, GEO and various travel publications, and continues to contribute regularly to New Zealand Geographic. He writes mostly about natural history subjects, and specializes in underwater assignments. His work for National Geographic has taken him from the sea ice of the Gulf of St Lawrence to the mangrove swamps of Bangladesh; from the rainforests of Fiordland to the kelp forests of Cape Town. His book Roads Less Travelled: Twenty Years of Exploration with New Zealand Geographic is published by Penguin (NZ) in September 2008. He lives in Auckland.
LIVE web chat with Authors Palumbi/Sotka on Monterey Bay and Oceans
Join the Live Video Web Chat on MONDAY, JUNE 13, 2011 at 3 p.m. ET as BookHugger presents The Death and Life of Monterey Bay by Stephen R. Palumbi and Carolyn Sotka.
The Death and Life of Monterey Bay outlines the unique history of the place—which went from pristine marine paradise to ravaged industrial wasteland, only to be revitalized years later—and demonstrates how the efforts of individuals can have a major impact on the environment.
READ A REVIEW: 4 Key Lessons Learned From The Death and Rebirth of Monterey Bay http://goo.gl/7DrwG
RSVP FOR THE CHAT at Treehugger or via Facebook.
To get the book at a 30% discount, visit Island Press via this link and use the coupon code 2HUG.
