The 1872–1876 expedition of HMS Challenger invented the science of oceanography. I previously discussed this remarkable voyage in my review of Doug Macdougall’s Endless Novelties of Extraordinary Interest. Since that book nourished but did not yet sate my curiosity, I vowed to read Full Fathom 5000, a promise I am making good on here. Focusing on the wondrous animals the expedition brought up from the deep, this engagingly written book provides a welcome additional angle.

Full Fathom 5000: The Expedition of HMS Challenger and the Strange Animals It Found in the Deep Sea, written by Graham Bell, published by Oxford University Press in July 2022 (hardback, 360 pages)

Biologist Graham Bell is based at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he teaches, amongst others, a zoology course. Since so many of the main groups of animals live in the sea, preparing for this course meant reading marine biology literature and thus encountering the unavoidable references to the Challenger expedition. Before long, he found himself making notes about the animals discovered, tracing the voyage on a map, and scrutinizing species lists until, rather amusingly I think, “it became easier to write the book than not” (p. 2). Most literature on the expedition focuses on the shore visits in exotic places. Bell instead largely omits these and puts the animals centre stage. The result is a nicely paced and balanced book that goes through the trip chronologically, discussing notable animal discoveries. He also gives surprising insights into the trip, adds relevant digressions about what we have learned since, and presents it all with the occasional well-placed dash of humour.

In the 1800s, we had no good idea about the deep sea and whether anything lived there. A key figure and spiritual forefather to the Challenger expedition was Edward Forbes. As he experimented with dredges, he soon noticed a vertical zonation to the organisms he retrieved and, plotting animal abundance against depth, postulated that no animals lived below ~300 fathoms (~550 m), which became known as the azoic hypothesis. Powell points out in Mysteries of the Deep that there was mounting evidence to the contrary that was ignored, while Bell here writes such reports were anecdotal and poorly documented. Regardless, there arose the idea of a systematic survey. Though Forbes would not live to see it, these plans were ultimately given logistical and financial backing by both the Royal Society and the Admiralty who commanded the Royal Navy.

After a brief first part that introduces these and other aspects (the committees involved, the ship, the crew, and the scientists), the bulk of the book takes you through the different legs of the cruise in 14 chapters. A menagerie of previously unknown animals was hauled up from the deep over the next 3½ years. Gorgonians (deep-water corals) whose polyps can live in such entangled colonies that “our unremarkable, unchallenged notion of the individual loses meaning” (p. 52). Barnacles that take sexual dimorphism to its logical extreme, with males little more than swimming testes that turn into an accessory reproductive organ after attaching themselves to females. Tripod fish that stand above the sediment on greatly elongated fins. Pond skaters that are rare examples of marine insects living on the sea surface. Holothurians (sea cucumbers) that showed up everywhere, indicating that deep-sea biogeography is very different from that on land. Polychaete worms that live inside sponges, their branching body all anus and one head. There lived animals in the deep alright.

“A menagerie of previously unknown animals was hauled up from the deep over the next 3½ years. […] There lived animals in the deep alright.”

These entries alternate with scenes from life on board. Several of the scientists and officers kept journals and afterwards wrote travel narratives on which Bell draws. Next to the successes, it also shows the boredom that set in as the expedition was a rather dull, rinse-and-repeat affair of taking depth soundings, measuring underwater temperature, and sampling the fauna with dredges and trawls at 348 locations (so-called stations) around the globe. By the time they reached the Central Pacific, some 2½ years into the trip, the naturalists were ready to go home, and journal entries sometimes passed over whole legs of the trip. I now better understand why Macdougall omitted the remainder of the expedition from Endless Novelties of Extraordinary Interest. The ~200 crew members were virtually all illiterate, with the exception (as far as we know) of assistant steward Joseph Matkin. A trove of letters home was discovered in 1980 and published in an annotated book. Bell gratefully mines that unique source for the proverbial “unauthorized version of the voyage” (p. 37). Thanks to Matkin’s letters, we know that the crew were in the dark as to their mission, other than what they had heard through the grapevine, something lead naturalist Charles Wyville Thomson tried to remedy through a lecture. Matkin also has an interesting explanation for why desertion rates remained high throughout the expedition: whenever passing navy vessels were implored to spare some men, they offloaded their most troublesome sailors.

There is a social justice streak running through this book, with Bell pointing out issues so evident in hindsight. There was extreme income inequality between the upper echelons and the crew, making this “not exclusively a modern phenomenon” (p. 43). Workplace accidents that would grind an operation to a halt today were an accepted fact of life. Probably the most tragic incident shows the impact of social class. When two people were urgently called to meet HMS Challenger at the island of St. Vincent to replace lost crew members, they arrived on the same boat, both short of money. But whereas the new schoolmaster was denied help by the British Consul, went looking for food, got lost, and died, likely of heat and thirst; the new sublieutenant was provided with board and lodging: “he was, after all, an officer and a gentleman” (p. 117).

Bell furthermore offers interesting asides on science history. One example is the infamous Bathybius haeckeli episode. One of Challenger’s goals was to confirm the existence of a primordial goo, a purported missing link between living and non-living matter that Thomas Huxley had noticed in bottled samples of deep-sea sediment. Try as they might, the Challenger scientists could not find it, until the onboard chemist John Young Buchanan discovered it was instead an inorganic precipitate that formed when seawater reacted with the preservatives used. Another example is how the aforementioned azoic hypothesis was revised repeatedly. Though the original formulation had been decisively disproven, could there still be a much greater depth below which life could not exist? When they accidentally found one of Earth’s deepest marine trenches, now called the Challenger Deep, they inexplicably deployed neither dredge nor trawl to check. Or could life perhaps survive both near the surface and at the bottom, but not in between? Just as important as what the scientists caught, is what they missed. Their equipment was rudimentary, unable to sample both very small organisms and the gelatinous creatures we now know occur throughout the water column.

“Though the Challenger expedition could have ended up as yet another forgotten Victorian oddity, it instead became legendary.”

Given that Bell authored the textbook The Evolution of Life, I should not have been surprised that he makes nicely formulated, thought-provoking observations on evolution. He mentions its tendency to modify existing structures rather than innovate completely novel ones. He flips the script on our perception of gelatinous creatures. Given that the deep sea is the largest habitat on the planet, rather than asking what might be the advantages of this lifestyle, we should perhaps consider it “the default option for animals. [Only] in special circumstances, where waves or tides or currents or gravity make it necessary, a robust body will evolve” (p. 280). Then there is the difficult question of which features to use in taxonomic classification. The expedition dredged up both the worm-like Glandiceps and the colonial, tentacle-bearing Cephalodiscus. Despite looking nothing alike, later anatomical investigation showed they are both hemichordates. “When we are trying to work out the relationships among animals […] should we place more importance on obvious features that are plain to see, such as a wormlike body versus tentacles, or on the ground plan of the body, such as two compartments versus three?” (p. 289). And when judging the relatedness of two corals with similar stony skeletons but different tentacles, which character do you use? Henry Moseley, the Challenger scientist most interested in corals, united the two groups based on their skeletons, whereas today they have been separated based on their tentacles. Bell reminds you that both ancestry and convergent evolution can result in character resemblance between different groups, complicating the science of taxonomy.

The final three chapters briefly trace what happened to the ship, the people, and the collected animals. They offer a gentle goodbye for the reader, as the trip ended rather abruptly: the crew disbanded, the six scientists never met each other again, and the ship, as opposed to e.g. the further adventures of HMS Erebus, was mothballed and unceremoniously scrapped for copper in 1921. Though the Challenger expedition could have ended up as yet another forgotten Victorian oddity, it instead became legendary. Bell sees two reasons for this. First was John Murray who played a minor role while on board but afterwards became the driving force that saw the project through to completion in 15 years, ensuring specimens were distributed globally to relevant specialists, data was analysed, and results were written up. Second was the worldwide dissemination to institutes and libraries of the massive 50-volume Challenger Report, grudgingly financed by the Admiralty.

Bell has gone to great lengths, consulting both primary and secondary literature regarding the expedition, as well as modern research on many of the animal groups discussed. In following the expedition chronologically from beginning to end, it provided the full meal that Macdougall’s Endless Novelties of Extraordinary Interest did not quite give me. The two books nevertheless stand shoulder to shoulder, each providing its own interesting and worthwhile perspective on the Challenger expedition.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Bell’s Full Fathom 5000

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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9-minute read
keywords: marine biology, wildlife conservation

As some of the world’s largest predators, orcas are both loved and loathed, though these sentiments sometimes come from unexpected corners. Danish marine biologist Hanne Strager has studied orcas and other whales for some four decades, working with a wide range of people. In The Killer Whale Journals, she plumbs the complexities and nuances of people’s attitudes, writing a balanced, fair, and thought-provoking insider’s account. Given the preponderance of research and books on Pacific Northwest orcas, hers is a refreshingly cosmopolitan perspective, taking in the experiences of people past and present in many other parts of the world.

The Killer Whale Journals: Our Love and Fear of Orcas, written by Hanne Strager, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in June 2023 (hardback, 266 pages)

Strager’s involvement with whale research started on a whim when she volunteered as a cook on a small research vessel going around the Lofoten Islands in northern Norway. This was in the 1980s and would, with some interruptions, be the start of a career in research and education that lasts to this day. Though she is fully qualified to write a scholarly work on orca^[1] biology, this is not that book^[2]. Rather, this is “a patchwork of stories I have collected over my years on the ocean about our relationship with the biggest predator on Earth” (p. 17). And what a wide-ranging, multi-hued patchwork it has become!

Some of these relationships are as you would expect. In her early days in Norway, both the whalers and fishermen she spoke to disliked orcas, considering them a pest species that frightens away other whales and eats all the herring. The best she can get out of the whalers, after showing them footage of orcas hunting herring, is admiration, though “it’s the hunters’ admiration for other smart hunters” (p. 61). Similarly expected is the strong respect expressed by First Nations people in British Columbia. She visits Ernest Alfred of the ‘Namgis tribe who lives on a tiny island off Vancouver Island. He quit his job as a park warden in 2018 to spend 284 days occupying a local island in protest against the operations of an open-net fish farm, echoing earlier protests by e.g. whale biologist Alexandra Morton. Large-scale aquaculture of Atlantic salmon off the coast of North America is big business but has well-documented impacts on the local environment and salmon populations that are in turn food for orcas. Alfred’s clever use of social media to broadcast his protest seems to have had an effect, and Canada is now seeking to end open-net fish farming in its waters.

Other people hold attitudes you would not expect, breaking with stereotypes. The Thawa tribe in New South Wales, Australia developed a cross-species cooperation with orcas in Twofold Bay: the orcas drove baleen whales close to the coast making them easier to catch, the hunters in turn left the carcasses in the water for a few days so orcas could take the choice bits. When Scottish whalers emigrated to the area in the mid-1800s, they continued this relationship, leading to an unlikely, century-long alliance between orcas and whalers. At the other end of the spectrum, Strager visits Inuit hunters in Greenland who continue to rely on the sea for their sustenance. They kill orcas on sight, convinced they eat narwhals. However, data from the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources do not back up this assertion: orcas rarely share the waters with narwhals, nor have narwhal remains been found in their stomachs. Hunting organizations disagree and stick to their narrative, continuing to kill orcas even though the meat is unsuitable for human consumption due to high levels of bioaccumulated pollutants. Strager is loathe to judge these people given their hospitality and willingness to talk to her, but she candidly admits that she is left troubled. “It is a widely accepted belief that the Inuit have a special relationship with nature and that this is automatically sustainable. Yet I can’t help but wonder if [this idea] is one of those persistent stereotypes, grounded in traditions and some truths but not totally accurate today” (p. 193). This might be an unpopular thing to say, but it strikes me as a good example of the limits of Indigenous ways of knowing. Yes, science has ignored Indigenous knowledge for too long, but it cannot be exempt from criticism. I rather agree with what Carl Safina recently wrote in Alfie & Me on the difference between the two: “For discerning objective reality […] science has the stronger claim” (p. 36 therein).

“As some of the world’s largest predators, orcas are both loved and loathed, though these sentiments sometimes come from unexpected corners.”

What further contributes to the book’s full-bodied picture is that Strager, as a Danish scientist, provides a non-US-centric perspective and has access to material written in other languages. With the help of a friend, she translates hundreds of newspaper articles from Iceland’s National Archive to puzzle together the story of how the US Air Force got involved in massacring orcas here in the 1950s, doing bombing raids on pods. Fishermen, driven to despair when the orcas discovered a new trick to catch fish from their gill nets, complained to the authorities who asked the Americans for help. Given that the presence of a US Air Force base in Iceland was controversial at the time, it presented a great PR exercise for the military, creating goodwill amongst the locals. Being plugged into the Scandinavian research community, Strager can furthermore draw on her connections to visit and speak to people in Denmark, Greenland, Russia, and various places in Norway.

Increasingly, the demonization of orcas has made way for a different understanding, seeing these as intelligent mammals, not unlike us. A new generation of fishermen in Norway is less hostile. The extra income generated by wildlife tourism and whale watching does not hurt, but, adds a Norwegian marine ecologist, there is also a sense of pride in one’s local patch. Having tourists visit from around the world and witnessing their awe can make people realize that their humdrum backyard is maybe not that humdrum after all. Captive orcas in aquaria and marine parks are another reason why public attitudes shifted from fear to fascination to concern over animal welfare, as has been so carefully documented by James M. Colby in Orca. Despite opposition, the capture and trade of orcas continues and one harrowing chapter delves into the infamous Russian “whale jail” that was exposed by journalist Mashaz Netrebenko in 2018.

As mentioned earlier, this is not a scholarly book, so orca biology takes a bit of a backseat. Nevertheless, you will learn about, for instance, the different orca populations and their dietary specializations, and how they do not mix genetically, causing a headache for conservation biologists. This behaviour is a prominent example of culture in cetaceans as it is learned and passed on from generation to generation. Strager also discusses the recent spate of attacks by orcas on pleasure craft in the Mediterranean. A marine mammal researcher from Madeira admits that she does not know if this is retaliation or just rambunctious play, but its rapid spread in the region sure points to orcas learning new behaviours from each other. Conservation concerns are the main recurrent biological theme in this book. Reflecting on the situation in the Pacific Northwest and the tremendous efforts expended on returning one orphaned orca, Springer, back to its pod, Strager writes how: “saving one orphan whale is a trivial task compared to changing the conditions that threaten these whales” (p. 214). Overfishing, chemical and noise pollution, shipping, aquaculture, hydroelectric dams—the long list of environmental insults is a poignant reminder that, in the words of Michael J. Moore, we are all whalers, even if only indirectly.

“Given the preponderance of research and books on Pacific Northwest orcas, Strager’s perspective is refreshingly cosmopolitan, taking in the experiences of people in many other parts of the world.”

The other aspect that takes a backseat is Strager’s personal story. This book covers some four decades of her life, from a young student in the 1980s to a seasoned researcher now. And yet, important life events are mentioned rather than elaborated upon. They help provide a sense of place and circumstance, but never play a central or even supporting role in her stories. The fact that she would have a child with the man who helped her onto that first research vessel all those years ago is one of those offhand, blink-and-you-miss-it comments. Nor does she mention that she is now working as a Director of Exhibitions, turning the local Whale Center in Andenes, Norway, where she worked for years into a world-class museum, The Whale, to open in 2025.

The Killer Whale Journals takes in an impressively broad range of people past and present. There are various other fascinating stories I have not even touched upon here. Strager remains mild-mannered and non-judgemental throughout as she carefully charts the nuances, inconsistencies, and complexities of people’s attitudes. If you have any interest in cetaceans or marine biology more generally, this absorbing book comes recommended.

1. ↑ Going on a tangent here: Strager, perhaps surprisingly, prefers the name “killer whale”. Partially this is out of habit, partially because the meaning of the species name Orcinus orca is little better. One loose translation is “demon from the underworld”, with Orcinus meaning “of the kingdom of the dead”. However, orca could also refer to the Latin word for cask or barrel, or to a large whale (Wikipedia and Wiktionary disagree with each other; also see this brief and amusing write-up on Whale Tales). Anyway, it is all a bit tomato tomato: I prefer orca and will stick with that here.

2. ↑ Remarkably, there does not seem to be a textbook dedicated to just orca biology. Erich Hoyt’s Orca serves up some of this but with plenty of historical and narrative asides. Readers could start with the broader Whales: Their Biology and Behavior or, if you are particularly adventurous, the Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

The Killer Whale Journals

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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When it comes to protecting animal species, you would think that conservation biologists, environmental advocates, and animal-loving members of the public are all on the same page. However, in Why Sharks Matter, marine biologist David Shiffman shows that this is not always the case. Though there are plenty of books marvelling at sharks, this, to my knowledge, is the first one to provide an informed and informative look at shark conservation. Frank, frequently opinionated, and full of refreshingly counterintuitive ideas, Why Sharks Matter is an eye-opener that delivered far more than I expected based on the title.

Why Sharks Matter: A Deep Dive with the World’s Most Misunderstood Predator, written by David Shiffman, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in July 2022 (hardback, 285 pages)

Before diving in, it is worth mentioning what Shiffman reiterates in a footnote towards the end of the book: “There are arguments for protecting sharks that don’t have their roots in science, and these aren’t wrong, they’re just not what I’m interested in and not what this book is about” (p. 217). He focuses on science-based conservation while ethics and morality are not explicit lodestars. He furthermore focuses on conservation (i.e. keeping populations healthy and preventing extinction) which is not the same as animal welfare (i.e. minimizing suffering and pain). The two aims sometimes coincide, but at other times do not. With the scope of the book thus clarified, Why Sharks Matter breaks down into roughly two parts, both of which relate to the notion that sharks are misunderstood predators.

To start, three chapters deal with the scary reputation and actual ecological importance of sharks. Shiffman sets the stage with some basics on shark biology and ecology. This book actually complements Shark Biology and Conservation which Johns Hopkins published two years prior in 2020. Whereas that book focuses on shark biology first and conservation issues second, Why Sharks Matter takes the reverse approach. The whale shark in the room that Shiffman wishes he could avoid but has to tackle is, of course, the topic of shark attacks (though he prefers the term shark bites), which I explored way back in 2017 when reviewing Shark Attacks. He explains just how unlikely shark bites are, why the fear persists, and what are and are not sensible preventative measures. No, Shiffman would much rather tell you why we are better off with than without sharks in the water. Thus, he rounds out this section of the book by discussing the ecological importance of sharks, covering such concepts as predation release, trophic cascades, keystone species, fear ecology, and the ecosystem-wide effects of sharks.

The heart of the book, however, is the next seven chapters that deal with conservation issues. This is where Shiffman really delivers the goods and he does so on three fronts.

“the take-home message is that there are no silver bullets; the best we can often say is that some conservation solutions will work for some shark species in some places.”

First, there is much about conservation biology that will no doubt strike the average reader, and even fellow biologists, as counterintuitive. For instance, the single biggest threat to sharks is overfishing, but that does not mean that there are no sustainable fisheries: some shark populations are neither historically overfished nor currently experiencing overfishing and are well-managed. This is a point made more generally in Ocean Recovery and is not a message welcomed by everyone. Furthermore, many conservation measures could work in theory but are so poorly executed as to be ineffective or even harmful. With fishing comes bycatch, but measures to reduce bycatch of one species (e.g. dolphins) can increase bycatch of others (e.g. sharks and turtles). Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) sound great on paper and can work, but in reality are often not properly enforced for lack of resources or political will, have often not even been established in the right place to protect target species (!), and the recent trend of Very Large MPAs sees them being designated in areas where there was little fishing pressure to begin with, making them hollow victories. Probably the most counterintuitive section in the whole book is his opposition to bans on the trade in shark fins (which is not the same as the practice of shark finning; you can have one without the other). If you want to see a level-headed, factual discussion of an emotive, hot-button topic, pay close attention to this section. A host of other measures is discussed here, but the take-home message is that there are no silver bullets; the best we can often say is that some conservation solutions will work for some shark species in some places. Non-experts who claim otherwise by touting simple solutions are frequently unaware of the complexity of the full picture. This nicely leads into…

Second, Shiffman’s presentation is frank. He highlights the frequent disconnect and disagreements between scientists on the one hand, and activists and the public on the other. Though some non-profits focused on shark conservation do wonderful work, others ignore scientists, facts, and evidence, and “regularly say things that are obviously factually incorrect” (p. 221). Similarly, as someone active on social media, Shiffman frequently deals with harassment, insults, and even death threats from members of the public for stating (uncomfortable) facts. He implores people repeatedly to have some humility and listen to experts: “Not to put too fine a point on it, but non-experts who’ve been thinking about the problem for five minutes are not especially likely to come up with a better solution to a conservation challenge than scientists who’ve had years of rigorous training” (p. 177). This really should not be a controversial thing to ask for, yet the fact that this is frequently taken as arrogant and elitist, is, for me, a sad sign of the times. Next to giving his honest opinion and tackling pet peeves he also offers readers helpful advice. What are some examples of reliable non-profits, and how do you determine if a conservation organisation is worth your support? What can you personally do and what should you avoid doing?

“no less important is Shiffman’s attention to the human dimension. […] managing wildlife frequently means managing people.”

Third, but no less important, is the author’s attention to the human dimension. For instance, managing wildlife frequently means managing people. This, in turn, requires input from social science disciplines, which is still often neglected. Wildlife conservation policies are far more likely to succeed if they have community support, which means involving and consulting those people who have to bear their costs. Next, most scientists oppose activist calls for blanket fishing bans, reminding them that fishing is a matter of food security for many. Activists in wealthy nations pressuring governments of developing nations “reeks of colonialism and privilege” (p. 229). Finally, he calls out the problem of representation, racism, and sexism in his discipline, as well as some of the initiatives to address these.

Overall, Why Sharks Matter is an eye-opener that will undoubtedly challenge some of your preconceived notions. I can see how the above-mentioned focus on evidence-based conservation will rub some people the wrong way, and some will disagree with his conclusions on ethical or moral grounds. Having said that, if you want to understand the logic and inner workings of conservation biology, you owe it to yourself to read this. In a world that is awash with books on sharks, Why Sharks Matter genuinely stands out.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Why Sharks Matter

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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We Are All Whalers is veterinary scientist Michael J. Moore’s account of a life spent studying different whale species and what is killing them. He argues that anyone participating in our global economy has blood on their hands, often without realising it. Readers are warned that this book does not avoid graphic details. His research has ultimately drawn him to the problems of whales getting entangled in fishing gear and being struck by ships. However, it is the path that took him there, through both industrial and subsistence whaling, that might leave some readers more upset.

We Are All Whalers: The Plight of Whales and Our Responsibility, written by Michael J. Moore, published by the University of Chicago Press in November 2021 (hardback, 213 pages)

Despite Moore’s preface claiming this book is not a memoir, my conclusion is that this is most assuredly a good example of a research memoir, taking the reader chronologically through his academic career. Later in life, Moore has become irresistibly drawn to the problem of entanglement and collisions which he describes in the second half of this book. As it is probably the most straightforward part to discuss, I will start there.

Much of Moore’s work has focused on North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) that live in the waters off North America’s east coast. These large whales (average length 14 m, average mass 40,000 kg) are filter-feeders that were almost driven to extinction by industrial whaling, with approximately 100 individuals remaining by the 1950s when the hunt was no longer considered profitable. Since then, the species has slowly recovered but is facing new threats.

The North Atlantic sees intense shipping traffic, leading to frequent collisions that result in death, sublethal blunt-force trauma, and ghastly propeller cuts. More harrowing still is the gear used by the fisheries industry, both gill nets for fish and ropes linking together surface buoys and bottom traps for lobsters and crabs. Moore has been intensively involved in documenting the impact of both, often while standing knee-deep in beached whale carcasses during necropsies to determine their cause of death. The preface warns readers: “This story is, at times, gruesome, but I entreat you to stick with it” (p. xiii). These necropsies have revealed the intense agony whales suffer over many months as entangled gear starts to constrict and cut into skin, blubber, muscle, and ultimately bone while the animals slowly lose weight, trying to heal wounds that will not close. This forms the starting point for a series of fascinating and daring at-sea experiments to measure weight loss and body condition using an ultrasound probe, attach recorders that measure the impact of entangled gear on swimming performance, and develop a system to administer sedatives to allow rescue workers to approach whales and cut loose nets and ropes.

“Moore has been intensively involved in documenting the impact of gear entanglement and ship strikes, often while standing knee-deep in beached whale carcasses during necropsies to determine their cause of death.”

When health complications leave Moore unable to continue fieldwork, he moves into fisheries politics to try and enact changes to gear design. One of the most galling details of this book is that workable alternatives to ropes exist. Scientists have used acoustically triggered release mechanisms for underwater gear for decades. These could be adapted for use with traps and gill nets, but a combination of costs and entrenched attitudes has prevented the industry from adopting this. Other changes to gear design have been proposed and some have been tested, but the problem persists. More hopeful is that speed restrictions and rerouting of shipping lanes have shown promising reductions in collisions with whales.

Moore’s account is intensely candid. He makes no secret of his insecurities—”the priorities, the pitfalls, the unknowns, the hopes and fears” (p. 139)—in designing and trialling solutions nobody has ever considered before. The cognitive dissonance between witnessing suffering whales and dispassionately reporting these findings in the scientific literature (this book is a valuable counterpoint to The Urban Whale to which Moore has contributed, showing the personal stories behind such research). The unpredictabilities that come with animals responding to climate change such as whales moving into new areas in pursuit of prey, resulting in “a slow, endless, and incredibly frustrating process of trying to stay ahead of a moving target” (p. 180). And, of course, the endless battle between the conservation lobby and the fishing industry with the latter usually winning out. The anguish is dripping off the pages in places and I could not help but wonder about the toll this work has taken on his mental health.

Moore is also outspoken in concluding, as the title implies, that our “consumer culture is the basis for this crisis” (p. 56). Our demand for seafood and cheap products shipped across the world is creating this problem. However, some readers might be surprised by his admission that he has “no angst toward the fishing industry. It was simply doing what I, as one of many, many seafood consumers, demanded” (p. 121). Shifting responsibility from the industry to consumers has been a favourite tactic of fossil fuel companies. Have his collaborations with the industry blindsided him to this? I furthermore think that Moore contradicts himself somewhat by hoping for a world in which fisheries and whales can sustainably coexist when he elsewhere flags up that commercial profit motive ruins everything. However, what shape a wholesale reform of our society and economy should take is, understandably, a topic too big for Moore and well beyond the scope of this book, though he seems to wrestle with it in the back of his mind.

“Moore’s account is intensely candid […] The anguish is dripping off the pages in places and I could not help but wonder about the toll this work has taken on his mental health.”

What might confuse and upset readers more is the first half of this book, charting the early steps in his research career. This saw him study both traditional whale hunting by the Iñupiaq of Alaska and the use of explosive harpoons, acting as a scientific observer on Icelandic whaling ships. This combination has given him a unique perspective, in hindsight serving as “the positive control of an experiment that has occupied me for much of the past thirty-five years: a test of how well, versus how badly, humans can kill whales” (p. 37). There are passages here that might shock some readers, with three, in particular, coming to mind:

“What is worse for a whale–an explosive harpoon or entanglement? One of the big surprises of my life is that the answer to this question is neither obvious nor clear-cut” (p. 35).

“For well-meaning anti-whaling activists to say that commercial whaling with explosive harpoons is bad simplifies the reality of a far more complex series of relationships that humanity has evolved for killing whales with and without intent” (p. 59).

“having studied the basic science and practice of slaughterhouses at veterinary school, and the various ways farmed animals are killed, I was frankly surprised by the efficiency of the fin whale hunts that I had witnessed. I was still appalled, but there did seem to be a shade of gray that I had a hard time defining” (p. 62).

Taken out of context, it is easy to be upset with these quotations. But even within their context, some of this verged into “this probably sounded good in your head” territory for me. I was left feeling conflicted. Having experienced all this first-hand has given him insights that most people cannot truly fathom and will likely criticize or dismiss; and to work through these experiences in full view of the reader is nothing less than brave. However, have they made him lose sight of the bigger picture? Some readers might question why he does not condemn industrial whaling more clearly. One obvious response is that public awareness of, and opposition to, industrial whaling has already been achieved. Meanwhile, the problems of gear entanglement and ship strikes still fly under most people’s radar, which is where the second half of the book shines.

Overall then, We Are All Whalers is an intensely personal, warts-and-all account that does not avoid the moral grey areas and internal struggles this research brings to one man’s mind. This is certainly one of the more thought-provoking and disturbing books I have read in a while. Anything less would not have done this topic justice.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

We Are All Whalers

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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The first thing I think of when hearing the name of marine biologist Daniel Pauly is shifting baseline syndrome. Once seen, this powerful concept of generational amnesia with regards to the state of the natural world is impossible to unsee. I previously reviewed Vanishing Fish, a collection of Pauly’s essays that introduced this and other influential ideas—and came away very impressed. It is followed by this outstanding biography that, true to its subtitle, convinces that the life and work of Pauly are remarkable.

The Ocean’s Whistleblower: The Remarkable Life and Work of Daniel Pauly, written by David Grémillet, published by Greystone Books in November 2021 (hardback, 408 pages)

Written by oceanographer David Grémillet, this book was originally published in French in 2019 as Daniel Pauly: Un Océan de Combats by Éditions Wildproject. Canadian publisher Greystone Books enlisted Georgia Lyon Froman who delivers a fine English version that occasionally highlights “Frenchisms” that might have otherwise been lost in translation. Three elements, that I will elaborate on below, make this biography particularly impressive: Grémillet is balanced in his coverage of Pauly’s life, has been thorough in his background research by interviewing numerous people, and understands and explains Pauly’s scientific achievements.

First, that coverage. The Ocean’s Whistleblower is told in 23 chapters and three parts that, mostly chronologically, take you through the main phases of Pauly’s life. He was born at the end of World War II to a White, unwed French mother and a Black American soldier who did not stick around. Financial struggles led his mother to entrust him to a Swiss family for a few months in 1948 that turned into 15 years when they refused to return him. Struggling his way through school despite his intelligence and voracious reading habit, he left for Germany in 1963 aged 17, working to pay for his education, eventually reuniting with his mother and her new family in France in 1967.

Grémillet then follows Pauly’s professional career, the first phase of which plays out in relative obscurity. Starting as a fisheries biologist at the IfM, an oceanographic institute in Kiel, Germany, Pauly works in Ghana, Indonesia, Peru, and, prominently, the Philippines at ICLARM, a non-profit organisation focused on the management of aquatic resources. At this stage he is more interested in issues of social justice than making a name for himself, publishing obscure technical reports rather than papers in high-impact scientific journals. It is only when ICLARM comes under new management and things go south that Pauly enters first-world academic circles when he is offered a full professorship at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. The third part of this biography, then, charts his meteoric rise to fame and takes us right up to 2017.

“What soon becomes apparent, […] is just how many people around the world Grémillet has interviewed in person while researching this book. “

What soon becomes apparent, and is the second aspect that impressed me, is just how many people around the world Grémillet has interviewed in person while researching this book. Sure, he probably travels frequently as an academic, but it is not just colleagues Grémillet speaks to. With great effort, he tracks down some of Pauly’s “foster siblings” in Switzerland, a French teacher, and a South African friend to discuss Pauly’s childhood. He gets the skinny on his family life from his wife, daughter, and son. And, given Pauly’s busy professional life, he speaks to many co-workers, former students, and, notably, some of his rivals. He gets an honest appraisal from Ray Hilborn, an American fisheries scientist who does not think the sky is falling where fishing is concerned and opposes the idea of Marine Protected Areas. Yet, even from these, one gets an overall sense of respect for Pauly’s achievements.

The third aspect that I really appreciated is that Grémillet is an oceanographer who understands the science and can explain its relevance—important given how much Pauly has published (550+ papers and counting). He also gives good summaries of the games of “academic ping-pong” (p. 213) as critiques and rebuttals fly back and forth. Pauly thinks big and Grémillet compares his mind to Darwin’s, “a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts” (p. 247), while a colleague remarks that “there’s a strategic aspect to his work where everything fits into everything else” (p. 285). None of what follows have, of course, been solo enterprises, and Pauly’s many collaborators get a chance to claim their share of the work. So, what has Pauly ever done for fisheries? Start the clock…

“Pauly has been a loud and persistent voice who has put overfishing in the public spotlight and on the political agenda.”

Of note, Pauly developed methods to quickly estimate growth rates and mortality (important for fisheries policies) from size data instead of from age determined by laboriously counting growth rings in otoliths (ear stones). He developed a suite of tools (Ecopath and Ecosim) to model complex marine ecosystems and how these are impacted by different fishing strategies and policies. He spearheaded the development of FishBase, a biological database with comprehensive information on all 30,000+ species of finfish. He led projects to review the global state of fisheries that popularised the idea of shifting baselines, kick-started the discipline of historical ecology (the study of past human–environment interactions), and warned that we are fishing down marine food webs. He memorably described that last idea to journalists: “having systematically stripped the oceans of top predators, we are now eating bait, and we’re headed for jellyfish” (p. 211). He uncovered how the constant decline in global fish catches since 1988 has been masked by China systematically overreporting catch figures to the FAO who are aware of it but do not see it as their mission to correct statistics. He subsequently started the Sea Around Us, a research initiative that reconstructed more realistic global fish catches from the 1950s to now by incorporating grey literature such as reports, and unofficial secondary sources such as port authority records, archives, newspaper articles, etc. He defends this by writing that “one must overcome the [psychological] notion that ‘no information is available’” (p. 260). This fed into the idea of ecosystem-based fisheries management: rather than focusing on exploited species, the focus should be on restoring ecosystems on which these species depend. In short, Pauly has been a loud and persistent voice who has put overfishing in the public spotlight and on the political agenda.

A final, brief aspect to mention is that, though Grémillet admires Pauly, this book is not a hagiography. He is not shy to point out how Pauly’s workaholic attitude has taken a toll on his marriage, his children, even his health (he suffered a stroke in 2005); how his PhD students struggle as he “set the bar astronomically high” (p. 249); or how his left-leaning tendencies and strong sense of social justice can get in the way. Didier Gascuel remarks on his controversial nature: “you drop him into a community that’s running smoothly, and the next thing you know, it explodes” (p. 281).

The Ocean’s Whistleblower is, simply put, an outstanding biography. It is incredibly well-written and well-researched and gave me a much better appreciation of this remarkable biologist. Greystone Books is to be praised for spotting this book and making it available in English.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

The Ocean’s Whistleblower

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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Marine biologist Helen Scales returns for her third book with Bloomsbury’s popular science imprint Bloomsbury Sigma. After shells and fish, she now drags the reader down into the darkest depths of the deep sea. Both a beautifully written exploration of the ocean’s otherworldly wonders and a searing exposé of the many threats they face, The Brilliant Abyss is Scales’s most strident book to date.

The Brilliant Abyss: True Tales of Exploring the Deep Sea, Discovering Hidden Life and Selling the Seabed, written by Helen Scales, published in Europe by Bloomsbury Publishing in March 2021 (hardback, 352 pages)

Sir David Attenborough has probably said it best: “No one will protect what they do not care about; and no one will care about what they have never experienced“. Both Scales and the publisher have taken that message to heart and the book is neatly designed. As with her previous book, illustrator Aaron John Gregory is involved again, this time providing two beautiful end plates and an eye-catching cover, while the colour plate section contains some outstanding photos. But at the heart of The Brilliant Abyss is Scales’s captivating writing.

First, consider the landscape. As she explains, the seabed, shaped by plate tectonics, is far from a featureless bathtub. Spreading centres create mid-ocean ridges, colossal mountain ranges that girdle the planet, while subduction zones where oceanic crust plunges back into the planet form deep-sea trenches of terrifying depths. The abyssal plain in between is studded with active or extinct underwater volcanoes that form seamounts of great import to marine life. Wherever magma approaches the surface, percolating seawater becomes superheated, rising back to the surface laden with dissolved minerals and metals. They form hydrothermal vents: towering structures that are home to unique fauna and are “the deep-sea equivalent of hot springs and geysers on land” (p. 97). Woven throughout is a history of scientific exploration, from the first oceanographic expeditions to today’s robotic submersibles, and from pioneering deep-sea explorers to today’s trench-diving billionaires.

Otherworldly as the landscape is, the real stars of this realm are its fauna. Scales’s knowledge and love of marine biology shine through here, as she populates the pages with a bewildering cast of creatures. Notable examples of bizarre deep-sea fishes are included, but she gives you so much more. Whale carcasses, so-called whale falls, become complete ecosystems, home to bone-eating Osedax worms with unusual sex lives. Large gelatinous members of the drifting plankton, such as colonial siphonophores and giant larvaceans, form previously underappreciated links in the food web. Hydrothermal vents are crowded with worms and furry Yeti crabs that domesticate symbiotic bacteria capable of chemosynthesis, the “dark alternative to photosynthesis” (p. 104). Meanwhile, one species of snail makes its shell out of iron! And then there are the corals. No, not the familiar tropical corals who “hog not only the sunlight but the limelight” (p. 129); the lesser-known cold-water corals that occur at great depths and grow even slower.

“[…] the real stars of this realm are its fauna […] whale falls become complete ecosystems, home to bone-eating Osedax worms with unusual sex lives. […] Meanwhile, one species of snail makes its shell out of iron!”

And if the intrinsic value of biodiversity does not sway you, Scales is no stranger to discussing the deep’s instrumental values. The capacity of seawater to absorb heat and carbon dioxide. The role of global oceanic currents in regulating our climate. Or the carbon pump provided by marine snow; the constant rain of dead plankton, fish poop, and other organic debris that descends into the depths. And what of the quest for new classes of biological compounds with antiviral, anti-bacterial, or anti-cancer properties that could form the pharmaceutical drugs and antibiotics of the future?

Two-thirds through the book Scales switches gears. Now that she has your attention, it is time to highlight the many dangers the deep faces. Deep-sea fishing targets long-lived, slow-growing species such as orange roughy. Vulnerable seamounts with millennia-old corals are destroyed by trawlers in a matter of hours. Meanwhile, the promise of food for everyone is not being met. Vast catch volumes are being turned into fish meal for aquaculture and pet food, or questionable nutraceuticals such as omega-3-oil supplements. And where Daniel Pauly already gave me reason to be suspicious of the Marine Stewardship Council, Scales lays bare their dubious raison d’être: funded by royalties from sales of their eco-labelled fish, there is an imperative to keep certifying fisheries. She calls their scandalous certification of the “recovering” orange roughy population a “case of a dead cat bouncing, with a green-washed eco-label tied to its collar” (p. 204).

Scales made me shudder with her stories of pollution, especially the persistent legacy of the large-scale dumping of chemical weapons. But the topic that concerns her most is the looming spectre of deep-sea mining. Though much is still on the drawing boards, mining licenses are being issued and exploratory missions are taking place. What for? The minerals and metals contained in seamounts, hydrothermal vents, and the polymetallic nodules littering the seabed, which take millions of years to form. As with fishing, “the slow pace of the deep is out of step with the timescale of impatient human demands” (p. 205). Here too, the position of the body that oversees protection of the seabed, the International Seabed Authority, is incredibly compromised. Next to issuing mining permits they unbelievably have already assigned areas to be exploited by their own mining company!

“To think that [deep-sea mining] will result in anything but the rapacious plundering of ecosystems we have seen on land seems highly unlikely in her eyes. Meanwhile, the mining PR-machine is already running at full tilt […]”

Scales’s focus on deep-sea mining is urgently needed. Scientists have been sounding alarm bells in the peer-reviewed literature regarding its impact, but this topic is still mostly hidden from the public at large. Her descriptions of the destructive practices and the size of the machines involved are chilling. To think that this will result in anything but the rapacious plundering of ecosystems we have seen on land seems highly unlikely in her eyes. Meanwhile, the mining PR-machine is already running at full tilt, and Scales deftly disarms their arguments as to why deep-sea mining is necessary. She agrees that the shift to renewable energy requires infrastructure that needs tremendous amounts of diverse metals. However, as a detour into the design of wind turbines shows, predicting which ones will be needed is difficult. And whether the seabed is the best place to get them is highly questionable.

Scales tackles many of the same topics that Alex Rogers covered in . Her tone is more strident but no less knowledgeable and, as opposed to The Deep, her book does include endnotes with references. I recommend them both highly. Meanwhile, her call “to declare the entire realm off limits [to] extraction of any kind” (p. 286) meshes seamlessly with Deborah Rowan Wright’s bold vision laid out in Future Sea.

Whether you enjoyed her previous books or are new to her brand of writing about marine biology, I urge you to read this book. Next to an unforgettable trip, she provides a rousing rallying cry for the preservation of the deep sea. The Brilliant Abyss is, true to its title, brilliant.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

The Brilliant Abyss

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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Peter Godfrey-Smith is popularly known as the scuba-diving philosopher and has just published his new book Metazoa, in which he plumbs the evolutionary origins of minds. In preparation for reviewing that book, I am (finally) turning my attention to his initial 2016 bestseller Other Minds. Here he beholds the octopus, only to find that, behind those eight tentacles, an intelligence quite unlike ours beholds him in turn.

Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life, written by Peter Godfrey-Smith, published in Europe by William Collins (a HarperCollins imprint) in March 2018 (paperback, 263 pages)

It is hard not to be familiar with at least anecdotal evidence that octopuses are unusually smart and inventive creatures. Stories from aquarium owners and results from behavioural experiments make for popular fodder in (science) news outlets. Sy Montgomery’s incredibly touching The Soul of an Octopus, which I read some years ago, only added to this impression. And lacking a true case of “first contact”, Russel Powell mentioned in Contingency and Convergence that coleoid cephalopod mollusks “are rightfully considered intelligent aliens on Earth” (his p. 140). But if like me, you have not read up on the more technical literature on their behaviour and cognition, it is hard to really fathom the octopus.

To make the reader appreciate just how different their intelligence is, Godfrey-Smith therefore first takes the reader down the evolutionary tree of life, back to our last common ancestor some 600 million years ago. Before the explosions of body plans in the Cambrian, the Ediacaran fauna consisted mostly of mats of bacteria and algae grazed by crawling invertebrates—a seemingly tranquil tableau dubbed the Garden of Ediacara by one author. The likely sequence of events that led, quite literally, to the rise of the cephalopods involved the development of buoyant shells, the invention of jet propulsion, and, in some groups, the almost complete loss of the protective shell.

“[…] how [do] octopuses experience the world given their hybrid centralised-decentralised nervous system?”

Godfrey-Smith only touches on those stages of cephalopod evolution that are relevant to his story here, which allowed Danna Staaf in 2017 to complete that picture with her magnificent book Squid Empire. What he is interested in is what the development of such utterly flexible bodies meant for brain development. First off, octopus brains are quite unlikely any others: their oesophagus runs through a ring-shaped central brain (with attendant risks when swallowing spiky prey), while their arms all contain large numbers of neurons. It seems that, at least part of the time, the arms “enjoy considerable independence” and “seem “curiously divorced” from the brain” (p. 67), suggesting a mix of top-down control by the central brain and a certain neural autonomy in each arm.

What lifts Other Minds above mere slack-jawed voyeurism at nature’s weirdness typical of fluffy pop-science books is that Godfrey-Smith, as a philosopher, is both interested and capable of exploring this far deeper. Yet, he does this with a style that, for want of a better description, feels kind and caring. So, when on page 24 he talks of the sensory-motor view of nervous systems, he bothers with a polite footnote: “If you’ve seen the word “sensorimotor” instead, please treat this as the same“. Thus, when he introduces the psychological concept of embodied cognition, you can rest assured that, as a reader, you will not be left feeling out of your depth. This refers to the notion that some of our smartness is encoded in our body rather than our brain. The constraints imposed by the joints and angles of our limbs make walking a rather natural solution to the problem of moving around. But how does this work for an octopus, whose body has no fixed shape? Their embodiment is different, to say the least, but Godfrey-Smith takes it a step further, arguing that “The octopus lives outside the usual body/brain divide” (p. 76).

These and other observations lead to the question of what it feels like to be an octopus. This is where Other Minds dives deeper, pondering the evolution and nature of consciousness and experience, and how octopuses experience the world given their hybrid centralised-decentralised nervous system. He takes a particularly close look at the fantastic colour-changing capabilities of cuttlefish, the most expressive of the cephalopods. This is all the more surprising given that they are effectively colour-blind, as they possess only one kind of photoreceptor (versus three in humans). Part of the answer to this puzzle was revealed by recent research on a different octopus species that showed that light-sensitive molecules in its skin allow it to both sense light (yes, with its skin) and respond with colour changes.

“[…] what Godfrey-Smith has been doing here, chapter by chapter, is gently blowing your mind.”

The theoretical and philosophical ponderings here are pleasantly lightened up with anecdotes from Godfrey-Smith’s observations on wild octopuses while scuba-diving at an underwater site in Australia dubbed Octopolis. Due to its high density of octopuses, this is a particularly interesting and rare study site in itself, as he reveals here.

All of the observations and studies mentioned here make for an even more bizarre picture once you realise that most octopus species live only a few years, with females breeding once and then dying. Why such neuronal profligacy? A quick tour into the evolution of senescence leads Godfrey-Smith to a neat explanation that takes on board the peculiarities of their evolutionary history. Here is an organism in which the loss of its shell led to the unusual combination of a complex nervous system to control a body of unbounded possibility, with a life-fast–die-young approach to reproduction due to an increased vulnerability to predation.

So I ask you again, what is it like to be an octopus? Once you reconsider this question towards the end of the book, you will realise that what Godfrey-Smith has been doing here, chapter by chapter, is gently blowing your mind. The subject matter is fascinating in itself, but it is his light touch and deft handling of complex and sometimes abstract concepts that make it easy to see why Other Minds was such a runaway success. Can he pull this off again and continue to captivate his audience? I will turn to his new book Metazoa next to find out just that.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Other Minds

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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The Southern Ocean, that vast body of water that flows unhindered around Antarctica, has to be one of the most forbidding oceans on our planet. Its latitudes are referred to by increasingly unnerving names the gale-force winds that have terrorised mariners since they first set sail here – the roaring forties, the furious fifties, the screaming sixties. Its waters are so cold that they are actually below freezing in places, with only their salinity preventing them from freezing solid (fish here have evolved antifreeze proteins!) As a consequence of these extreme conditions, this region has long remained unexplored. But, as historian Joy McCann shows, explore it we did. Brace yourself for a gripping piece of environmental history, marked by heroism as much as hubris, and curiosity as much as cruelty.

Wild Sea: A History of the Southern Ocean, written by Joy McCann, published in Europe and the USA by the University of Chicago Press in May 2019 (hardback, 274 pages)

Our planet cares little for cartography. From its perspective, there has only ever been one ocean, one all-enveloping fluid lapping its shores. What we now recognize as the Southern Ocean took shape some 40 to 20 million years ago as the forces of plate tectonics ripped up Gondwanaland, pulling apart Australia and Antarctica. Its completion arrived when the Magellan land bridge between South America and Antarctica was breached, opening up the Drake Passage and allowing the ocean to flow unimpededly around Antarctica in a so-called circumpolar current. This, as McCann explains in her introduction, is the geographical setting of the Southern Ocean.

Humans, meanwhile, have long speculated about the existence of a Southern continent, going back as far as the second-century astronomist Ptolemy. Although rumoured sightings of Antarctica by European explorers go back at least as far as 1599, it was not until the mid-1700s that in particular England and France started despatching ships on missions that were equal parts conquest and discovery. These were the times of James Cook commanding HMS Endeavour, Resolution, and Adventure, and later James Clark Ross aboard HMS Erebus and Terror. Particularly influential, and featured here extensively by McCann, was HMS Challenger expedition, which has been hailed as birthing modern oceanography. It also saw merchant’s vessels take crazy risks to try and find shorter routes to India. McCann’s description of sailing boats venturing into the roaring forties and having to turn north at the right moment at a time when they could not even fix their longitude beggars belief.

“The Southern Ocean […] has to be one of the most forbidding oceans on our planet. Its latitudes referred to by increasingly unnerving names – the roaring forties, the furious fifties, the screaming sixties”

McCann has organised each of her chapters around a natural attribute of the Southern Ocean (ocean, wind, coast, ice, deep, current), rather than stick to a strict chronology. This means she sometimes retreads the same historical path but from a slightly different perspective. One such perspective that leaves a bloody trail through the book is that of brutal exploitation. The cold waters of the Southern Ocean feed a huge number of seals, penguins, whales, and fish – and humans have ruthlessly hunted these to near-extinction in roughly that order. Seals were hunted by the millions for fur starting in the 1800s. Penguins fell victim not long after. An estimated two million (!) whales were harpooned, sliced up, and rendered into oil – lubricating and lighting the Industrial Revolution back in Europe. The ecological consequences of this slaughter still reverberate through these ecosystems and fish and whales remain under threat.

McCann pays as much attention to the natural world in this environmental history. Though not intended as a primer on the biology of marine mammals and seabirds, the pages of Wild Sea are nevertheless littered with details on the lives of whales, seals, albatrosses, petrels, and fulmars, though she has left out some delightfully risqué details on penguins. I was very pleased, however, to see her go into the microscopic creatures underlying all this biological richness, such as the diatoms (single-celled algae) and zooplankton, notably the large Antarctic krill.

“An estimated two million (!) whales were harpooned, sliced up, and rendered into oil – lubricating and lighting the Industrial Revolution back in Europe”

The physical environment also features prominently. Much like generations of sailors before her, McCann marvels at ice – the bergs, the floes, the glaciers – and the sometimes otherworldly play of the light here. But I was fascinated by what lies beneath. There is the ocean’s bathymetry (the underwater topography) and the incredible story of the mapping of the ocean floor (see also the biography of Marie Tharp). These efforts revealed the existence of mid-ocean ridges that helped the theory of plate tectonics finally find wide acceptance.

But McCann really enraptured me with the currents. These slowly travelling bodies of water shape our climate on a planetary scale and understanding their three-dimensional nature is an ongoing mission. Invisible to us, this underwater realm features waves, eddies, gyres, and underwater storms of staggering proportions. McCann captures some of this mysterious grandeur in her descriptions: “In the Weddell and Ross seas, which lie on either side of West Antarctica, the water becomes heavy as salt leaches out of the ice shelves, forming waterfalls below the ocean surface that plunge up to 2 kilometres into the abyss.” (p. 144) Her helpful notes link to an amazing animation put together by the Research School of Earth Sciences at the Australian National University.

“Currents form an underwater realm of staggering proportions. McCann captures some of this mysterious grandeur in her descriptions”

Wild Sea is an incredibly diverse book and McCann’s writing is informative and absorbing. In just 200 pages she manages to touch on a plethora of topics including history, oceanography, climatology, ecology, and marine biology. There are other amazing stories in this book I have not mentioned, one inspiring example being footage of a traditional whale-calling ceremony culminating in a meeting of indigenous leaders from around the globe. As an introduction to the many entangled natural and human histories of the Southern Ocean, this one comes highly recommended.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Wild Sea hardback or ebook

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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“The Deep: The Hidden Wonders of Our Oceans and How We Can Protect Them“, written by Alex Rogers, published by Wildfire in April 2019 (hardback, 366 pages)

I find the deep ocean one of the most fascinating ecosystems on our planet. Perhaps it is the final-frontier aspect, as so much of it remains unexplored (Rogers gives some mind-boggling statistics), or maybe it is the otherworldliness of its inhabitants, but I cannot get enough of reading more about it. Rogers’s fascination started at an early age, encouraged by summer holidays spent out on the ocean with his grandfather, an Irish fisherman. Although he recounts these formative experiences with great fondness, he also recognises the cruelty visited upon the unfortunate fish and lobsters that were caught.

A research career in marine biology followed and Rogers relates with great enthusiasm some of the highlights in marine science that he has lived through. Hydrothermal vents had only just been discovered in 1977 (see also The Ecology of Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vents), and he participated in expeditions that first explored these deep-sea hot springs in the unruly waters of the Southern Ocean using remotely operated underwater vehicles. There was the ten-year Census of Marine Life (see also Discoveries of the Census of Marine Life: Making Ocean Life Count). And, of course, technological developments allowed both manned and unmanned submersibles to venture deeper, capture better footage, and even carefully return samples to the surface (see also Discovering the Deep: A Photographic Atlas of the Seafloor and Ocean Crust and In Oceans Deep: Courage, Innovation, and Adventure Beneath the Waves).

This is the wonder in this book.

The furry yeti crabs, the dream-like towers of black smokers hiding in the abyss, the millennia-old corals, the predators that are all mouth and stomach. And do not get me started on the fish (see also my review of Deep-Sea Fishes: Biology, Diversity, Ecology and Fisheries). Rogers’s eyewitness descriptions of the bizarre fauna are mesmerizing. The colour plate section is only all too small.

“The furry yeti crabs, the dream-like towers of black smokers […]The colour plate section is only all too small”

Here is another strong suit of The Deep: Rogers shows the relevance of seemingly obscure scientific research. The confirmation that the deep-water coral species Lophelia pertusa – so different from tropical species – builds reefs might seem like academic arcana to outsiders. But it was decisive in a UK court judgement to recognise the continental margin of the UK (and by extension that of the European exclusive economic zone) as habitat in need of protection from oil exploration and other activities under the European Habitats Directive.

Rogers is that rare breed of scientist who is not content losing himself in his research. He has advised conservation NGOs, provided testimony in court, and worked on projects for the UN to name but a few achievements. He cares intensely and his fighting spirit shines through in his writing.

This is the horror in this book.

See, one of the biggest problems with the open ocean is its remoteness and its lawlessness (see also my review of The Outlaw Ocean: Crime and Survival in the Last Untamed Frontier). Large parts of the oceans fall outside national jurisdictions and are effectively a marine wild west. Rogers effortlessly switches between the wonders of the denizens of the deep that we are only just beginning to discover, and the horrors of their destruction before we have even had the chance to properly take stock of what is out there.

“[…] the denizens of the deep [are destroyed] before we have even had the chance to properly take stock of what is out there “

The Deep is bang up-to-date on this front. There is the familiar spectre of overfishing: the rise of the industrial fishing complex, the harmful government subsidies, the collapse of fish populations, the destructive practice of trawling, the infuriating wastefulness of by-catches and simply catching more than the market can handle (see my reviews of All the Boats on the Ocean: How Government Subsidies Led to Global Overfishing, Daniel Pauly’s Vanishing Fish: Shifting Baselines and the Future of Global Fisheries, and The Curious Life of Krill: A Conservation Story from the Bottom of the World, and references therein). But Rogers is equally at ease explaining the details behind ocean acidification, eutrophication with concomitant episodes of oxygen depletion and algal blooms (a topic I am intimately familiar with from my own studies), changing ocean temperatures and coral bleaching, and palaeoclimatological evidence of past changes (see also my review of The Oceans: A Deep History).

And then there is pollution. So much pollution. Untreated wastewater and sewage, discarded and lost fishing gear, oceanic garbage patches and microplastics (see Microplastic Pollutants and Microplastic Contamination in Aquatic Environments: An Emerging Matter of Environmental Urgency), persistent chemicals that accumulate in the food chain. Even something as topical as the chemical oxybenzone in sunscreen, recently banned in Hawai’i, is mentioned. And Rogers is warily eyeing up the imminent threat of deep-sea mining, as the world continues to hunger for rare earth elements (see also The Elements of Power, and the double-act Deep-Sea Mining: Resource Potential, Technical and Environmental Considerations and Environmental Issues of Deep-Sea Mining: Impacts, Consequences and Policy Perspectives).

“[…] Rogers is warily eyeing up the imminent threat of deep-sea mining, as the world continues to hunger for rare earth elements”

Amidst this onslaught, Rogers continues to fight and eschews cynicism (though his success in court surprised even him). As opposed to terrestrial ecosystems, few marine species have yet gone extinct and fish populations can rebound if given the chance (see my review of Ocean Recovery: A Sustainable Future for Global Fisheries?). He convincingly shows that marine protected areas are a vital tool to offer fauna and flora a safe haven (see e.g. Marine Protected Areas: A Multidisciplinary Approach and Marine Conservation), and joins E.O. Wilson in his call to set aside large tracts of the planet (see Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life).

The Deep is an absorbing and passionately written book that successfully combines an eyewitness account of the biological bounty of the deep sea with first-hand reporting on the threats, the conservation initiatives, the (failure of) policies and treaties, the fierce industry lobbying, and the political shenanigans. The Deep is aimed at a general audience and Rogers has decided to leave out literature references, footnotes, and an index. But those omissions are a small price to pay. At a time when we need as many people as possible to take notice, and when a documentary such as Blue Planet II can shake a nation out of its stupor on plastic pollution, good storytelling is a necessary and promising approach.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

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The Deep paperback, hardback, ebook or audiobook

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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“Vanishing Fish: Shifting Baselines and the Future of Global Fisheries”, written by Daniel Pauly, published by Greystone Books in June 2019 (hardback, 304 pages)

Although steam-powered trawlers have been around since the Industrial Revolution and fish populations have been collapsing since the 1880s (see also my review of Fishing: How the Sea Fed Civilization), it was post-World War II that the global industrial fisheries complex arose and fishing went into overdrive. As Carmen Finley documented so carefully in All the Boats on the Ocean: How Government Subsidies Led to Global Overfishing, several nations in record-tempo build huge, heavily-subsidised fleets, with modern technologies giving fish no respite in what used to be refuge areas.

Now, “collapse” sounds ominous and, as Pauly points out, the popular press unfortunately often interprets it to mean extinction. Instead, fisheries biologists define it as the catch of a species dropping below 10% of its historical maximum. When easily accessible populations were no longer profitable, fishing companies have responded by fishing further out to sea, at greater depths, and marketing species they never used to, systematically fishing out species after species. In a clever marketing ploy, companies have slyly renamed fish to sound more appetising. Would you rather have the Patagonian toothfish or the Chilean sea bass? They are one and the same species. Many other species end up as anonymous fast food in fillets or fish sticks, with most consumers neither knowing nor caring what comes out of their deep fryer.

“In a clever marketing ploy, companies have slyly renamed fish to sound more appetising.”

Most fisheries biologists, Pauly included, were blindsided for several decades, unaware that population crashes were not isolated events. The explanation, he writes, is two-fold. First, a myopic focus of scientists on just the economically important species occurring in their waters. This changed from the 1990s onwards when Pauly and others published a series of high-profile papers showing crashes to be part of a global pattern (see also the collection 5 Easy Pieces: The Impact of Fisheries on Marine Ecosystems). Second, the shifting baseline syndrome: scientists take population sizes and compositions at the start of their career as the baseline, and easily overlook, ignore, or disparage as mere anecdotes the knowledge of their predecessors – a creeping process that gets repeated with each new generation. The 1995 essay in which Pauly coined this term is included here and hit a nerve. It is easy to understand why: the idea of this kind of collective amnesia is powerful and impossible to unsee once seen. And it can be applied to ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss around the globe (see e.g. my review of Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter). Pauly has been duly credited with seeding the new discipline of historical ecology (see also Shifting Baselines: The Past and Future of Ocean Fisheries and Marine Historical Ecology in Conservation: Applying the Past to Manage for the Future).

The other notable achievement of Pauly and others that is told here was to highlight the bias in the annual catch statistics of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Although widely quoted and used, they (unbelievably!) ignore small-scale fisheries, fish discarded as bycatch, and illegal and unreported catches (see also The Last Fish Swimming: The Global Crime of Illegal Fishing). To correct for this, Pauly spearheaded The Sea Around Us, an international project to create a database of total world catches. What began as an attempt to correct and complement official statistics expanded into the reconstruction of catch time series. A separate essay here provides more background information, but, principally, it consists of reconstructing past fish catches by taking into account historical information from a wide variety of sources that most scientists have been hesitant to acknowledge and quick to dismiss as anecdotal. Yes, writes Pauly, it is not perfect, but it is all we have to combat the shifting baseline syndrome and better than no information. This culminated in the 2016 publication of the groundbreaking Global Atlas of Marine Fisheries: A Critical Appraisal of Catches and Ecosystem Impacts, the data for which is being kept up-to-date via The Sea Around Us website.

“[…] the idea of [shifting baselines as a] kind of collective amnesia is powerful and impossible to unsee once seen”

Are there solutions? As also highlighted in my review of Ocean Recovery: A Sustainable Future for Global Fisheries?, fish populations can recover if given a chance, and Pauly has his share of ideas how to achieve this, but it will take time, protected areas, and willpower, and we are further away from this than ever before. In the 1990s, Pauly worked together with the WWF to create the Marine Stewardship Council, whose “MSC-certified” logo many will recognise from products on supermarket shelves. It has been a bitter pill, then, that lately their advice has become increasingly questionable, certifying as sustainable fisheries that are clearly not. This includes the euphemistically named “reduction industry” that literally grinds whole catches into fish oil (see my review of The Omega Principle: Seafood and the Quest for a Long Life and a Healthier Planet) and fish meal, the latter ending up as food for fish and livestock farms (see also the forthcoming The Fishmeal Revolution: The Industrialization of the Humboldt Current Ecosystem).

Next to providing an insightful picture of the global nature of the problem, Pauly demystifies technical matters such as Maximum Sustainable Yield (see also All the Fish in the Sea: Maximum Sustainable Yield and the Failure of Fisheries Management) and Individual Transferable Quotas. He is outspoken and sometimes scorching in his critique, referring to the global fishing industry as a vast Ponzi scheme, and calling the MSC seafood guides “magic wallet cards so that we can feel good about ourselves”. Harsh words, but they reflect a justified fury in the face of such wanton destruction.

“[Pauly is] scorching in his critique, referring to the global fishing industry as a vast Ponzi scheme […]”

I was initially mildly concerned when I noticed that Vanishing Fish is a collection of previously published material, but then I realised some people are just too damn busy saving the world to retreat on year-long sabbaticals to write a book. Although there is a slight repetition of certain important themes, this does not noticeably take away from the book. The preface claims that the original essays have not been updated except for the removal of certain outdated words and paragraphs, but references to “these essays” suggest that some effort has been made to streamline the whole, and some of the 700+ endnotes have been used to include current information and debates. Far from a slapdash affair, Vanishing Fish is an attention-grabbing book by one of the most important fisheries biologists of our time that provides an urgent overview of the problems with the global fishing industry.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Vanishing Fish hardback or ebook

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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