At Every Depth

This week’s review features firsthand stories on changes affecting the world’s oceans, underscoring the importance of protecting our waters and combatting climate change.

Posted on August 5, 2024 in Reviews of the Month

At Every Depth: Our Growing Knowledge of the Changing Oceans

Hill, Tessa. by Tessa Hill and Eric Simons Columbia, 2024
280p bibl index, 9780231199704 $32.95, 9780231553254

An oceanographer and a science writer collaborate on this series of stories that focuses as much on humans as they do on the watery depths. The ocean is the “main character but it needs a voice,” and the stories come from scientists, Indigenous peoples, shellfish farmers, fisheries workers, coastal community members, and others who know the oceans best. The book is organized by different oceanic environments, from shallow bays and inlets to the dark, frigid Arctic and Southern Oceans. These are stories of observed and documented rapid changes: rising temperatures, increased acidification, degradation from pollution and overfishing, and the resulting disruption in species composition and worldwide abundance. Every chapter imparts astonishing new understanding of the impacts of human activity on ocean environments, once seen as infinitely vast and inscrutable. The authors hope that conveying these stories will alert readers to the need to slow climate change, decrease use of plastic and the fossil fuels used to produce them, and recognize that human health and environmental stability are directly dependent on healthy oceans. Well written, thoroughly researched and documented, this compilation would enhance any collection serving adult readers.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.
Reviewer: A. S. Ricker, formerly, Oberlin College
Interdisciplinary Subjects: Environmental Studies
Subject: Science & Technology – Earth Science
Choice Issue: July 2024

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Enjoy this week’s review? Check out more reviews of related titles:

• The Garden Politic: Global Plants and Botanical Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century America
• Teach for Climate Justice: A Vision for Transforming Education
• Atomic Environments: Nuclear Technologies, The Natural World, and Policymaking, 1945–1960
• A Blue New Deal: Why We Need a New Politics for the Ocean
• Negotiating Climate Change in Crisis

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