Oceanology The Secrets of the Sea Revealed

We manifest an intrinsic fascination with those things on the brink of our knowledge. There’s a romance, a yearning, seemingly a need to wonder about things beyond our reach. Deep space, other planets, aliens … but, as is often cited, we may actually know more about these phenomena than about the inhabitants of our own oceans because 80 percent of them are unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored for the so very simple reason that this environment is beyond your reach and mine. We are terrestrial, airbreathing mammals, and while some humans swim well, free dive, or use increasingly sophisticated scuba kit or robots to explore the oceanic unknown, the rest of us “land lubbers” just watch the waves. Beneath those waves is another world—one that, thanks to science and technology, we are learning a lot more about, a lot more quickly. And, as this fabulous book shows, it is almost incomprehensibly beautiful and fantastic. From the smallest to the largest, the shallows to the deep, the fierce to the fearful, these organisms share our planet but live in a different dimension. How exciting! So here is an opportunity to meet the neighbors, the “wet ones,” the extraordinary diversity of miraculous life that has evolved in the oceans. And yet, remote as it can seem, the cultural aspects of our relationship with the sea reveal how we have always had a close connection to this charismatic, dangerous, and rewarding realm. But the tides have turned. Now we are the greater danger, and no drop of our seas is secure. Coral reefs are bleached. Plastic litters the greatest depths and fills the bellies of turtles and whales and chokes albatross chicks. The acidification of the water, pollution, and overfishing threaten the entire ocean ecosystem. There has never been a more important time to immerse ourselves in the wonder of the briny world and thus learn to love and protect it. Dive in, swim among stranger things, and then stand up for our oceans.