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Grave Waters
Sea Sick: The Global Ocean in Crisis By Alanna Mitchell
Deep Blue Home: An Intimate Ecology of Our Wild Ocean By Julia Whitty
One of the greatest limitations we face as a species is that we react to events as opposed to prepare for them. For examples, a heart attack often leads to a complete change of lifestyle, but only after the fact. Collectively we are much the same, so it is a good thing that books come along that alert us to the fact that one of the Earth’s essential organs, the ocean, is in trouble. And if the ocean is in trouble, so are we.
In Sea Sick, talented Canadian journalist Alanna Mitchell paints a vivid picture of the peril to planetary life if the seas fail. In her award-winning book, Mitchell successfully connects us to the mysterious hidden ocean in a way that works even for ordinary citizens who are preoccupied with simple survival in troubled times. Plankton, while unspectacular and often almost invisible to the naked eye, produce half of the world’s oxygen, Mitchell notes. Then the drive the punch home: Ocean plankton supply every second breath we take. Mitchell admits that she is no scientist, but she is adroit in deploying stark, realistic and eminently understandable analogies.
A bleak read at times, Sea Sick nonetheless conveys a message of hope, albeit sone that is tinged with fear. While the clock may be ticking, she tells us that it hasn’t run our – yet. Mitchel warns us that we need to change. Her book doesn’t preach, it simply reminds its readers: you are part of the ocean, not apart from it. Then it asks: So what are you going to do about it?
** This review first appeared in Alternatives Journal 37.3: EcoBooks, published in May 2011.
Click here to see more of that issue. **
Julia Whitty’s Deep Blue Home feels more fictional than Mitchell’s Sea Sick. In fact, Deep Blue Home’s idiosyncratic language occasionally obscures its message. Some words rooted in Latin and Greek are explained in brackets, which is distracting. Likewise, some species are identified with their scientific name and threatened status in brackets; others are not, or are so identified only after being mentioned several times.
Whitty is at her best when she prunes her excessive language and simply tells it like it is – as she does in narrating the heart-wrenching dangers facing leatherback sea turtles. Fascinating and perturbing in equal measure is the author’s explanation of how the popularity of feathers has resulted in a massive reduction in bird colonies, and her eye-opening account of the decline of cod. When Whitty juxtaposes such stark realities to the beauty she describes, emotions swell.
But Whitty is not trying to change how we see the ocean. Moving passages certainly describe humanity’s negative impacts on other species, but for the most part, this is a well-written account of the time the author spent at sea, largely in the Gulf of California and Newfoundland. Deep Blue Home is not solely about the sea either. The first section is mostly about birds, inexorably linked though they may be with the sea. When she visits Newfoundland, she dives more deeply into the world of seals, fish, whales and moon jellies.
The ocean is so out of sight to most of us, so remote and mysterious even to those who spend their lifetime exploring it, that we easily neglect its pivotal role in our planet’s systems and in our daily lives. Whitty attempts to engage our emotional connection to oceans, occasionally shocking us with what we are doing to that beauty, whereas Mitchell tells us directly what we are doing to them – and explains the consequences.
The ocean is experiencing the symptoms that come with a life-changing heart attack. The doctor has told us we are a ticking time bomb. Do we want to change course? These two passionate, though very different, accounts won’t change the world, but they remind us that change is still possible.
(Sea Sick published by Emblem Editions, Toronto, 2010. 248 pages.)
(Deep Blue Home published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York, 2010. 256 pages.)
Jim Cornall works in communications and at the aquarium at the Huntsman Marine Science Centre in St. Andrews, New Brunswick.
