Deep Water

February 27, 2024
The first chapter of Deep Water is named ‘The Word for World Is Water’, a reference to science fiction writer Ursula K Le Guin’s novella The Word for World Is Forest. Le Guin’s fiction was deeply attuned to the effects of capitalism on the environment, and this sets the tone for Deep Water, a book of foreboding joy arising from the impact of human life on Earth’s wondrous oceans. James Bradley (The Resurrectionist, Ghost Species) adopts a wide lens in Deep Water, from the inspiring moment humans see the blue planet for the first time on the Apollo 8 mission to the alarming reality that human interference led to the Antarctic ice shelf collapse. Readers learn in one chapter about how sea creatures communicate; another chapter presents the bleak effects of global shipping, including human trafficking and damage to ocean reefs. Deep Water also looks at the relationships First Nations people have with the seas, and Darwin’s early understanding of underwater landscapes. If the concepts are challenging to digest, Bradley’s prose is a delight to read. The book’s enduring message is about the effect of climate change and how we must reverse it. If readers need convincing, this book may do it. Those who liked Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything will enjoy Bradley’s dedication to research in tackling such a significant topic, as well as his use of first-person prose.

May 13, 2024
This expansive report from novelist Bradley (Ghost Species) studies ocean ecosystems as a means of exploring the interconnectedness of life on Earth. Emphasizing the fragility and complexity of ecological communities, Bradley notes that the industrial-scale slaughter of whales in the early 20th century counterintuitively resulted in an 80% drop in the krill population because whale “excrement provides vital nutrients for the phytoplankton upon which the krill depend.” Fish are more sophisticated than they’re given credit for, Bradley contends, citing research that found “rainbowfish learn to associate signals with food... twice as fast as dogs” and that sticklebacks ostracize group members who don’t take their turn in the vulnerable position at the front of the school. Such studies underscore what will be lost if humans don’t rein in climate change, Bradley argues, discussing how rising sea levels are endangering Australian sea turtles by submerging their traditional breeding grounds. Bradley weaves natural history, climate studies, and trivia into an elegant whole that drives home the dire threat global warming poses to the ocean, all delivered in plaintive prose (“The toxic legacies of human industry written into the bodies of ocean creatures are a reminder that the deep is not a place of forgetting, but an ark of memory”). It’s a galvanizing call to action. Agent: Camilla Bolton, Darley Anderson Literary.

June 1, 2024
A novelist, activist, and naturalist writes a paean to the sea. Bradley, editor of The Penguin Book of the Ocean, reminds readers that we live on a planet whose surface is mostly water. "We spend the first nine months of our lives suspended in the liquid of the womb; once we emerge our tissues are made of water, our blood salt as the sea," he writes. With a nod to Rachel Carson, who also wrote about "the ocean's mysteries" and "the way its meanings haunt and elude us," Bradley brings the science up to date with the latest findings of oceanographers and biologists. He begins with a history of the Earth; soon after the planet cooled, water appeared. Bradley delivers a vivid, expert education on the ocean's makeup and behavior, including valuable information on currents, tides, sea creatures, reefs, glaciers and sea ice, abyssal depths (amazingly rich in life), beaches, and resource extraction, with an emphasis on the heavy hand of human exploitation. In the 20th century, scientists mourned species extinction and disappearing forests, but the current century's onslaught of climate change, massive chemical and plastic pollution, and technology that literally vacuums up life from the ocean and ores from its floor means that many modern natural histories--Bradley's included--deliver as much pain as pleasure. Human cultures barely disturbed the ocean until technology from Western Europe exploded across the world after the Middle Ages, followed by the industrial revolution. While historians do not ignore the despicable international slave trade, colonialism, and racism that followed, Bradley devotes more space than the average natural historian. His warnings about the mass human disaster already in progress, including continued warming and rising sea levels, are more focused, though equally disturbing. A satisfying tribute to the wonders of the ocean and the myriad dangers it faces.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from June 1, 2024
Over 70 percent of Earth's exterior is overlaid by oceans. These watery places are vast, mysterious, vital, and profound. Australian writer Bradley elucidates how ""the ocean's depths are not an alien realm, but intimately entangled with every other part of the planet."" For example, more than half the oxygen on Earth is generated by the oceans. Bradley's shimmering discussion extends beyond deep-sea science to include history and the drastic effects of climate change. The origin of oceans, development of human societies and cultures on the ocean's edge, sensory worlds of aquatic organisms, and oceanic soundscapes are deftly described. Diel vertical migration (synchronized motion of marine creatures), hydrothermal vents, tides, beaches, swimming, and the hadal zone (deepest part of the ocean) receive attention. The biodiversity and interconnectedness of oceanic lifeforms are breathtaking. The bioluminescence of sea creatures, teamwork between octopuses and groupers, the whistling of dolphins, and magnetoreception of turtles and whales are celebrated. But Bradley worries about our oceans becoming ""diminished, depleted, exhausted."" He notes the warming and acidification of seawater, loss of sea ice, plastic and nuclear waste in the ocean, destruction of coral reefs, and collapse of the fish population. We inhabit a unique and wondrous watery world. Let's not slip up on our responsibility to respect and protect it.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.