Rivers and oceans are easily neglected when it comes to pollution. Out of sight, out of mind and all that. Except that the oceans do not forget. Of all the water pollution problems, oxygen loss is probably one of the more abstract ones. Even the words used to describe it, hypoxia and anoxia, will be meaningless to those without a background in biology. In Dead Zones, marine scientist and microbiologist David L. Kirchman provides a general introduction to the problem of oxygen loss and why it matters.
Dead Zones: The Loss of Oxygen from Rivers, Lakes, Seas, and the Ocean, written by David L. Kirchman, published by Oxford University Press in April 2021 (hardback, 224 pages)
I thought you could not tell me anything new on this topic. After all, for my PhD, I spent five years in Finland studying how fish behaviour in the Baltic Sea is affected by eutrophication, the pollution caused by excess nutrients. The Baltic is one of several badly affected water bodies in the world due to the large land area that drains into it and the narrow connection with the North Sea. However, my studies focused on decreased underwater visibility due to algal blooms rather than oxygen loss. Dead Zones was thus a welcome surprise and refresher, showing that even I had only an incomplete picture of the problem.
So what are dead zones? They are areas of fresh or marine water that have low (hypoxia) or virtually no (anoxia) dissolved oxygen. As Kirchman clarifies in his prologue, the term is a bit dramatic. It does not mean that the whole water column is affected, often it is limited to the bottom layer. And they are not always completely dead, some organisms actually thrive here. But many creatures are sensitive to oxygen loss, leading to slower growth, fewer offspring, and poorer health. In extreme cases, it leads to the death of fish and bottom-dwelling invertebrates, reduced biodiversity, and reshuffled food webs.
Dead zones vary in size through time, influenced by weather and currents. But since about the 1950s, they have been steadily growing both in size and number, and we know the cause. Fed by excess nutrients, algae bloom. When they die, the bacteria decomposing them use up oxygen quicker than it can be refreshed. But before we get to this point in our understanding, the first half of the book takes the circuitous route through the history of their discovery.
“[Dead zones] were a natural occurrence in the past, but the frequency and severity have increased, and it all centres on roughly 1950.”
Some of the first dead zones that were widely noticed were the Great Stinks. Not that long ago, many rivers running through bustling cities in Europe and the US received large loads of untreated sewage. The resulting bacterial feast would rapidly consume all the oxygen and then switch to sulfate metabolism, releasing hydrogen sulfide with its characteristic smell of rotten eggs. Wastewater treatment facilities brought this problem under control, with rivers recovering and fish returning.
Much harder to notice were the dead zones developing in coastal areas, such as the Gulf of Mexico or Chesapeake Bay, or inland seas, such as the Black Sea or the Baltic Sea. Kirchman takes you through their discovery in the 1980s and the research by Nancy Rabalais and others to address the question whether they have always been there? The answer required the meticulous collection of long time series of oxygen measurements and the study of sediment cores that record past oxygen levels. The conclusion is that, yes, they were a natural occurrence in the past, but the frequency and severity have increased, and it all centres on roughly 1950. How so? More nutrients, specifically nitrogen and phosphorus. Where did they come from? Artificial fertiliser used in agriculture. As discussed here, there have been naysayers, both in scientific circles and amongst farmers and industry, but the evidence is pretty convincing by now.
Although Kirchman does not explicitly mention it, the 1950s marks a transition period dubbed the Great Acceleration during which our impact on the environment boomed. And the increase in nitrogen and phosphorus release is one of many indicators used by scientists to define the start of the Anthropocene. Two key figures Kirchman introduces here are Fritz Haber and Karl Bosch. The former developed a process to cheaply and efficiently fixate nitrogen, the latter scaled it up for the industrial production of explosives and artificial fertiliser. The Haber–Bosch process was one factor facilitating the human population explosion driving the Great Acceleration. As Kirchman mentions, “Depending on your diet, about half of the nitrogen in your body came from a factory using the Haber–Bosch process” (p. 96), and Vaclav Smil is quoted as writing that, without it, Earth would probably have only half the human population it has now.
“[…] these problems have been […] difficult to tackle. One factor is the inherent complexity of the system. […] There is no one-size-fits-all solution.”
Having arrived at the status quo, the second half of Dead Zones explains why these problems have been so difficult to tackle. One factor is the inherent complexity of the system. Which nutrient is the limiting one runs the full gamut from nitrogen in marine waters (mostly) to phosphorus in lakes, and sometimes neither. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Similarly, as Kirchman explains, fish kills are not a problem suitable for a bumper sticker slogan to rally behind: “Dead Zones Kill Fish and Fishery Jobs” (p. 128). The reality is more nuanced. Oxygen depletion can, for example, boost fish landings when fish flee hypoxic zones and become easier to catch. And this leads to the second factor: all these complexities make it very easy for those who stand to lose from tougher environmental regulations to call for more research, and for legislators to hesitate to implement anything. However, as Kirchman points out: “[…] we cannot ignore dead zones just because the effect of hypoxia is complex” (p. 133). To that end, he offers a range of solutions, including things that you, the reader, can do.
Dissolved oxygen levels in water was never going to win the prize for the sexiest topic. Given this inherent handicap, Kirchman’s conversational tone makes Dead Zones nicely accessible. However, I do feel that the overall structure and clarity suffer somewhat, although I cannot quite put my finger on the why. The narrative ricochets between different topics and some things are only touched upon (e.g. the rise of jellyfish, or the release of neurotoxins during certain algal blooms). I did enjoy the historical sketches, they are Kirchman’s forte. At only 172 pages, this book is not a thorough overview but more a general introduction. Since these topics are normally discussed in scientific journals, reports, academic monographs, and edited collections, it is an introduction that is long overdue.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
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 The Deep. 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.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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Say fossils and what comes to mind are the big, the bad, and the sexy: dinosaurs, pterosaurs, marine reptiles—in short, macrofossils. But perhaps more important and certainly more numerous are the microfossils. Fossils so small that you need a microscope to see them. In this richly illustrated book, French geologist and micropalaeontologist Patrick De Wever offers bite-sized insights into a discipline that rarely gets mainstream attention but undergirds many human endeavours.
Marvelous Microfossils: Creators, Timekeepers, Architects, written by Patrick De Wever, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in April 2020 (hardback, 256 pages)
Marvelous Microfossils immediately reminded me of Christian Sardet’s Plankton published by the University of Chicago Press in 2015. Both are large-format illustrated books on a mostly invisible world, originally published in French, that were picked up by American university presses. De Wever’s book was first published in 2016 by Biotope Éditions as Merveilleux Microfossiles and has now been published in English by Johns Hopkins University Press.
The book follows a straightforward structure. Four thematic sections each consist of short, one-page vignettes on a certain topic with illustrations and photos on the facing page. A first section introduces the various microscopic techniques used to study microfossils, as well as their living counterpart, plankton. One vignette covers the birth of oceanography, notably the 1872–1876 H.M.S. Challenger Expedition, another later deep-sea drilling projects such as Glomar Challenger and JOIDES Resolution.
A second section touches on the deep history of life and our planet as told through microfossils. Some of the oldest fossils, at 3.5 billion years old, were formed by thin films of photosynthetic cyanobacteria that trapped sediment and, layer by layer, slowly formed rocky accretions known as stromatolites. Other important chapters are the Great Oxygenation Event some 2.3 billion years ago when atmospheric oxygen levels rose dramatically, in the process rusting the planet’s iron reserves and forming the banded iron formations that we mine to this day. Another side-effect was the Huronian glaciation which turned our planet into a “Snowball Earth”. There was the formation of the ozone layer which allowed life to flourish closer to and ultimately on the surface, the contribution of plankton to fossil fuel reserves, and so forth.
“Who [are] these microfossils [?] […] Mostly, they are members of the plankton community; the often translucent, near-invisible microorganisms that drift on ocean […] currents”
All of these subjects are deeply fascinating, and some have been the subject of excellent popular academic books. I cannot help but feel that De Wever’s vignettes are so brief as to barely scratch the surface. That said, where this approach comes into its own is the third part of the book where he surveys the diversity of microfossils. By now you may well be wondering who these microfossils are, what organisms they consist of. I would have started the book with this section. Mostly, they are members of the plankton community; the often translucent, near-invisible microorganisms that drift on ocean and freshwater currents. This encompasses phytoplankton capable of photosynthesis such as cyanobacteria, diatoms, dinoflagellates, and coccolithophores. But also numerous small animals: copepods and ostracods (tiny crustaceans), pteropods (tiny molluscs), sponges, foraminifera (amoeboid protists dressed in filigree skeletons known as tests), the very spiny radiolarians, more mysterious groups such as acritarchs and conodonts, and many others. Their dead bodies continuously rain down in the water column, with time forming sediments and rocks all of their own.
The diversity of these groups is wild and the variation in shape and morphology defies the imagination. Seeing is believing, however, and the book includes a large number of photos and illustrations to help with that. Next to numerous (electron) microscope photos, De Wever draws heavily on the many drawings of the famed 19th-century German zoologist Ernst Haeckel, with over a third of the illustrations here from his oeuvre. 
Next to an influential biologist, he was also a skilled artist. Books such as Kunstformen der Natur and his illustrations for the reports of the Challenger expedition marry art and science.
Haeckel makes a return in the book’s last part, which looks at how microfossils, buoyed by Haeckel’s fame, influenced 19th century (French) art and architecture, notably Art Nouveau. There are also glimpses, all too brief, of other fascinating artists who painstakingly arrange microfossils under the microscope into geometrically mesmerising microtableaux (seen on the cover) or carve delicate scaled-up wooden versions of marine plankton.
“Patrick De Wever offers bite-sized insights into a discipline that rarely gets mainstream attention but undergirds many human endeavours.”
Last but not least, microfossils are economically incredibly important. As they are so numerous and their morphology evolves quickly, they make good markers for biostratigraphy, i.e. for determining the age of rock layers based on their fossil contents. The latter is vital when searching for petroleum and minerals, or for large engineering projects where you need to know on what rock layers you are constructing heavy infrastructure and buildings. Due to their ubiquity, foraminifera and diatoms are particularly useful groups.
There are very few popular books on micropalaeontology. Beyond the rare introductory textbook or welcome introductory guide to, say, diatoms, you will quickly find yourself confronted with journal articles and technical monographs, e.g. the long-running monograph series Bibliotheca Diatomologica from the German publisher Schweizerbart, and the Iconographia Diatomologica and Diatom Monograph series from Koeltz Scientific Books.
In conclusion, Marvelous Microfossils is worth it for the illustrations alone and is readily accessible to readers with little to no background in geology, palaeontology, or marine biology. Although I would have liked more substance than the short vignettes De Wever provides, I cannot deny that he here unlocks for a general audience an academic discipline that is normally largely ignored outside of the professional community.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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Planet Earth might just as well be called Planet Water. Not only is our planet mostly ocean, life also started out here. Following his 2011 book Convergent Evolution, palaeobiologist George R. McGhee returns to MIT Press and The Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology to expand his examination to oceanic lifeforms, with the tantalising promise of applying the insights gained to astrobiology. I was particularly stoked for this second of a three-part dive into what I consider one of evolutionary biology’s most exciting topics.
Convergent Evolution on Earth: Lessons for the Search for Extraterrestrial Life, written by George R McGhee, Jr., published by MIT Press in November 2019 (hardback, 317 pages)
Just to get you up to speed, convergent evolution refers to the ubiquitous pattern of evolution repeatedly hitting on the same or similar solutions to a problem in different organisms. McGhee’s coverage of this topic in his 2011 book was wide. Next to morphologies and behaviours in terrestrial animals, he examined convergent evolution in ecosystems and molecules such as DNA and protein. He also introduced the abstract concepts of theoretical morphology and the hyperdimensional morphospace where life is probing all possible and allowed options.
Convergent Evolution on Earth can be thought of as an extension of his previous work. There is no repetition of these concepts and the coverage across different levels of organisation is absent. McGhee assumes familiarity with this and readers would do well to read the two books in sequence. If you do, the approach here will feel familiar, as most chapters again revolve around lists with examples. What is new is that McGhee broadens his examination of convergent evolution to behaviours and morphologies in marine organisms.
“[…] the question “who is convergent on who?” is much more relevant [here, as] it is the land plants who convergently evolved similar forms to much older marine animals”
I will come right out and say that I found this book a more challenging read. The terrestrial species examined in his last book will be familiar to most, but this book deals with marine vertebrates and, mostly, invertebrates. There are numerous groups here that even biologists will not necessarily be familiar with, also because many extinct groups are discussed. Thus, the convergent evolution of chemosynthesis found in deepwater species far away from light covers ciliophorans, polychaete and oligochaete worms, and a wide array of living and extinct mollusc groups. The convergent evolution of different morphologies to deal with living on soft and unstable substrates covers sponges, corals, extinct bivalves such as bakeveliids, and all sorts of echinoderms. More familiar groups such as fish and cephalopods feature when discussing adaptations to moving and living in the water column (McGhee’s mention of the repeated re-evolution of the whole spectrum of ammonoid shell forms following mass extinctions made me smile, as it reminded me of Danna Staaf’s discussion of this phenomenon in her excellent Monarchs of the Sea). And the convergent evolution of fundamental organ systems (e.g. nerves, muscles, or immune systems) reaches all the way back in time to some of the earliest invertebrate groups such as ctenophores, cnidarians, and bilaterians.
Of course, our land-dwelling, backboned vantage point makes us biased—for the longest time these invertebrate forms dominated life on Earth, and they are still instrumental to our ecosystems. Even so, most of us will not know what they look like, and this where the lack of images is much more noticeable than in McGhee’s previous book. The recent The Invertebrate Tree of Life is a good reference work to have at hand, not just for the imagery, but also for the taxonomical content. Though it was published just after Convergent Evolution on Earth and McGhee will not have had access to it, the taxonomy he has adopted closely mirrors that of Giribet & Edgecombe, with some exceptions deep in the tree of life that are known areas of contention.
“[…] what of the promised lessons for astrobiology? […] I felt a bit let down by the subtitle—it promised more than the final […] chapter to which this discussion is now limited.”
Next to showing the very deep roots and fundamental nature of convergent evolution, the question “who is convergent on who?” is much more relevant and appropriate this time around. Though we have named many sea creatures after land plants (e.g. sea lilies and moss animals), this book makes clear that, to solve the same fundamental problems, it is the land plants who convergently evolved similar forms to the much older marine animals. A notable advance is the adoption of new, recently proposed terminology, distinguishing between iso-convergence, allo-convergence, and retro-convergence. These terms respectively describe whether convergent traits evolved from the same or different precursor traits, or are a case of re-evolution of ancestral traits.
But what of the promised lessons for astrobiology? There is a look at Mars’s geological history, the possibility of life on water worlds in our Solar System such as the moons Europa, Enceladus, and Titan, and there is the conclusion that biological signatures are likely found on water worlds and technological signatures on water worlds with landmasses (readers interested in this will want to check out the massive Life in the Cosmos). Although what McGhee covers here is interesting, I admit that I felt a bit let down by the subtitle—it promised more than the final, 25-page chapter to which this discussion is now limited. My feeling is that most general readers will be better served by Kershenbaum’s The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy. For those wanting to get to grips with this topic more in-depth, I end this three-part series with my review of Contingency and Convergence which revisits the question of their relative importance and applies this to astrobiology in a thought-provoking manner.
Convergent Evolution on Earth is not for the faint of heart. For evolutionary biologists, this is an interesting add-on to McGhee’s previous book, though requiring a certain level of background knowledge. For many other readers, there is probably less astrobiology in here than they would like.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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The legendary British broadcaster and natural historian Sir David Attenborough needs almost no introduction. Since his first appearance on our television screens in 1954, he has gone on to a long and distinguished career presenting and narrating groundbreaking nature documentaries. And he shows no sign of slowing down. His voice and style have become so iconic that he has been dubbed the voice of nature. Over the years, he has increasingly expressed concern over the state of the natural world, and in A Life on Our Planet Attenborough fully engages with this topic. However, when you turn to the title page you will notice the name of a co-author, Jonnie Hughes, who directed the Netflix documentary tied in with this book. As Attenborough explains in his acknowledgements, Hughes has been particularly instrumental in the writing of the third part of the book, together with substantial assistance from the Science Team at WWF. This is Attenborough’s witness statement, yes, but whose vision of the future is it?
A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future, written by Sir David Attenborough with Jonnie Hughes, published by Witness Books (an imprint of Ebury Press) in October 2020 (hardback, 282 pages)
A Life on Our Planet is divided into three parts, the first of which features highlights from Attenborough’s filmmaking career. Interwoven with vignettes that you might recognize from his autobiography are short episodes in the history of life on our planet and the rise of human civilization—this is Attenborough writing at his finest. Overlaid is his increasing concern for the changes he has witnessed. Each chapter heading ominously lists the human world population, the atmospheric carbon level, and the estimated percentage of wilderness remaining in a certain year.
The brief second part, “What Lies Ahead”, serves as a bridge to the third part and introduces several important concepts. One is the Great Acceleration, the period following the 1950s in which our activity and impact on the environment ramped up tremendously. The other is the Planetary Boundaries model drawn up by Johan Rockström and colleagues, which I brought up in my previous review of Planetary Accounting. This Earth systems science framework demarcates a “safe operating space for humanity” by identifying nine planetary processes and systems with their boundary values, several of which we have exceeded with our actions. In just ten pages, the book then looks ahead to some likely environmental tipping points in our near future, such as forest dieback and permafrost melting. I was expecting a longer section along the lines of Lynas’s Our Final Warning and Wallace-Well’s The Uninhabitable Earth, but clearly, this book has no interest in dwelling on the catastrophes ahead.
“Interwoven with autobiographical vignettes are short episodes in the history of life on our planet and the rise of human civilization—this is Attenborough writing at his finest.”
This brings us to the vision for the future, which is where the question of authorship becomes increasingly blurred. At times I was not sure whether I was reading Attenborough’s voice or a WWF policy brief. The book takes the planetary boundaries model with its ecological ceiling and Kate Raworth’s modification known as the Doughnut model, which adds a social foundation to it, i.e. the minimum requirements for human well-being. It then outlines some of the changes required to significantly reduce our impact on the planet, leaning towards “green” and nature-based solutions aimed primarily at restoring biodiversity. The overall tone here is hopeful and the book hits many relevant points, though I have some criticism.
Let’s start with what I appreciated. First, and this feels like Attenborough speaking, it gets its philosophy right, tackling anthropocentrism: “We moved from being a part of nature to being apart from nature […] we need to reverse that transition” (p. 125). It also acknowledges the shifting baseline syndrome in the context of fisheries and beyond: how each generation takes an increasingly impoverished environment as the new normal. Right out of the gate it tackles the need to move beyond the paradigm of perpetual growth and abandon Gross Domestic Product as our prime measure of welfare. Agriculture will have to rely on far less land through solutions that are high-tech (e.g. hydroponic greenhouses run on renewable energy), or low-tech (e.g. a shift away from monocultures to something more approaching functional ecosystems via regenerative farming and the growing of mixed crops). Most important would be a change from a meat- to a plant-based diet. Attenborough again: “When I was young […] meat was a rare treat” (p. 169). We should want less stuff and require our things to be repairable and recyclable, moving ultimately towards a circular economy. This all ties in nicely, although it is not spelt out here, with an ethos of self-limitation that we need to reclaim.
“This brings us to the vision for the future, which is where the question of authorship becomes increasingly blurred. At times I was not sure whether I was reading Attenborough’s voice or a WWF policy brief.”
Carbon capture will have to be achieved not by high-tech solutions, but by both reforestation on land and the farming of kelp forests in the sea (Ruth Kassinger already made the point in Slime that algae might just save the world). Both these solutions will help the massive rewilding efforts this book envisions: Marine Protected Areas will help fish populations to recover, resulting in sustainable fisheries, while on land more habitat will become available for wild animals. And, finally and importantly, the book tackles human population numbers, aiming for the humane solution of stabilising the world population as quickly as possible at 9–11 billion people by lifting people out of poverty and empowering women.
The holistic package proposed here, underpinned with examples of success stories from around the globe, almost makes it sound like we can have it all. Can we? The authors acknowledge that many of these transitions will not come easily and will require everyone to come together and cooperate (in itself a tall order). Where achievability is concerned, the devil is in the details, and I do feel that these are sometimes glossed over and that taboo subjects are avoided.
Take agriculture—there is no mention of the tremendous potential of genetically modified organisms. Similarly unmentioned regarding renewable energy is the concept of energy density and our reliance on increasingly energy-dense fuels as civilization progressed. There is no consideration of the tremendous amount of resources needed to build and maintain the necessary infrastructure. A combined solution of renewable and nuclear energy (admittedly a non-renewable) is considered a no-no. And though a circular economy is a step up from our linear system of produce-use-discard, you cannot endlessly recycle: a constant influx of virgin material is required. Not all metals can be economically recovered, nor all the compound materials we make unmade. Ever tried unfrying an egg? Entropy does not run that way.
“The holistic package proposed here […] almost makes it sound like we can have it all. Can we? […] these transitions will not come easily and […] the devil is in the details.”
The word “overpopulation” is studiously avoided, which is remarkable as Attenborough has been outspoken on the subject elsewhere (see this short explainer or the 2011 RSA President’s Lecture). The closest he gets to it here is when he writes that “we have overrun the Earth” (p. 100). Later, the possibility of a demographic transition to a declining world population is mentioned, but not the suggestion put forward by some that a lower world population of, say, 2–3 billion might be more sustainable. And though Attenborough points out increased longevity as a contributing factor, there is no examination of our relationship with death. Should we really direct all our efforts to maximising life span? At what cost, both environmental and quality-of-life-wise? And, lastly, the now-dominant narrative of female empowerment is only half the story and puts the onus squarely on their shoulders. Making contraception and abortion available to women is needed, but better still would be to prevent pregnancies by starting with male education. Condom, gentlemen?
Admittedly, I am arguing details here. Though they need serious consideration in my opinion, much of what is proposed here is sensible. A Life on Our Planet is very accessible and admirably concise. Its central message, that things cannot continue as they are, stands. If there is anyone who can communicate this to a wide audience, it is Sir David Attenborough. Some of the writing here will stick with you long after you have closed the book: “We often talk of saving the planet, but the truth is that we must do these things to save ourselves.” (p. 218). Here speaks a wise elder who, even at 94, indefatigably defends our environment.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
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.
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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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“Origins: How The Earth Made Us“, written by Lewis Dartnell, published in Europe by The Bodley Head (a Vintage imprint) in January 2019 (hardback, 346 pages)
Dartnell takes as his starting point the evolution of Homo sapiens in East Africa. He subscribes to Maslin’s ideas for where and when we evolved, outlined in The Cradle of Humanity: How the Changing Landscape of Africa Made Us So Smart. The gist of his argument was that it was a combination of plate tectonics and climate. The geography of the African rift valley and pulses of climate variability interrupting longer periods of stability led to regional lakes rapidly appearing and disappearing. This unstable environment favoured adaptability and intelligence. Dartnell similarly gives a revealing geological explanation reaching back 55 million years for how the most recent ice age came about and how it has impacted human dispersal around the world.
Now, it is easy to accuse a popular science book like this of glossing over subtleties for the sake of a good story. I therefore appreciated that Dartnell clearly signposts there are frequent disagreements on the details of the story of human evolution, and that not all evidence points in the same direction: his narrative represents the consensus view. He is nuanced enough to point out what that may seem rapid and purposeful – humanity’s global migration starting 60,000 years ago – was, in fact, a matter of trial and error. I liked his suggestion that there may have been earlier attempts at migrating out of Africa, or developing agricultural civilizations, that simply fizzled out before taking off. Similarly, when he brings up the effects of the Toba eruption on early humans (see my review of When Humans Nearly Vanished: The Catastrophic Explosion of the Toba Volcano), he immediately flags this up as controversial. All this gave me a good feeling about the balance Dartnell is trying to strike between presenting a captivating narrative while sticking to the facts and how best to interpret them.
“there may have been earlier attempts at migrating out of Africa, or developing agricultural civilizations, that simply fizzled out before taking off.”
From this point forward, the remainder of the book deals with the last 10,000 years of human civilization, making excursions into deep time explanations where needed. For readers of Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years this is perhaps more familiar territory as he discusses the rise of agriculture (see also my review of Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States for some nuanced counterpoints to the standard narrative) and livestock husbandry. Here he reaches back into deep time to explain why Eurasia ended up with so many more domesticable species compared to the Americas, and why the orientation of the continents made the spread of agriculture easy in Eurasia (which is oriented East-West), but hard in the Americas (which is oriented North-South).
With agriculture came trade and Dartnell chronicles the establishment of the first maritime and overland trade routes, leaning heavily on overview works such as The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World and The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. His interest is in how these were shaped by the geography of the seas (the shape of coastlines, the existence of naval bottlenecks) and the land (the ruggedness of the terrain, microclimates). And he explores how our subsequent maritime Age of Exploration, when Western nations started colonising countries around the globe, depended on, and was shaped by, the planetary patterns of ocean and air currents, in turn shaped by where plate tectonics has parked the continents currently.
In the same vein, he spends two chapters exploring the deep origin of the materials we use to build and construct with (whether architecture or objects and tools), how they are formed, how they have ended up distributed over the world the way they have, and how that has played into the fortunes of civilizations and nations. He talks of rocks and metals and does an excellent job explaining our current dependence on rare earth elements and platinum group metals.
“90% of the coal we have used since the Industrial Revolution was formed during the Carboniferous […] if that had not happened, would the Industrial Revolution have taken off?”
He is concerned about our continued appetite for these resources. His arguments got me thinking, and I wonder whether we might be reaching a hard limit. When our increasingly advanced machinery and electronics depend on almost all the elements in the periodic table, where do you go from there? These materials are – if not always rare – hard to obtain, and there are often no suitable replacements. When you depend on finite resources like that, and things like renewable energy technology and computers cannot function without, can we continue to science and engineer our way out of our problems? I get the feeling this is rarely thought or talked about when considering the future. Similarly, he convinces that transitions throughout our history have acted as a ratchet, allowing us to expand and increase our population to a point where there is no turning back (or at least not without drastically decreasing the size of our global population) – we would not be able to feed, clothe, and shelter this number of people anymore with yesterday’s technologies.
Finally, he gives a quick tour of energy (see also Energy and Civilization: A History) and how we transitioned from muscle power to wind and water power and then fossil fuels, taking the reader through the age of coal, the steam engine and then oil. Here, too, he is specifically interested in how these resources were formed and why they are found where they are found. From reviewing Energy: A Human History and Carboniferous Giants and Mass Extinction: The Late Paleozoic Ice Age World I was already familiar with the fact that 90% of the coal we have used since the Industrial Revolution was formed during the Carboniferous, some 360-300 million years ago (leading Dartnell to ask the same question as Rhodes in the former book: what if that had not happened, would the Industrial Revolution still have taken off?) But Dartnell provides a lucid geological explanation to the question why so much coal was formed then. And it turns out there was a similar period in which the vast majority of the world’s oil reserves were formed, again for a good geological reason.
In his book The Equations of Life: The Hidden Rules Shaping Evolution, Charles Cockell wrote that physics is life’s silent commander, setting hard limits on what evolution can and cannot do. I would argue that Dartnell here similarly convinces that geology is history’s silent commander. Very accessible and full of interesting ideas, Origins is a worthy contender in the saturated market of big history and environmental history books. Depending on how much you have read on this topic, not everything here will be novel, but I do think that with its deep time and geology perspectives, Dartnell goes a few steps beyond most books.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
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“Serendipity: An Ecologist’s Quest to Understand Nature”, written by James E. Estes, published by the University of California Press in May 2016 (hardback, 275 pages)
Estes’s story begins in 1970. Narrowly avoiding being drafted into the Vietnam war as a soldier, he ended up in the Aleutian archipelago, the chain of islands that are strung between Alaska and Russia, to research the population status of sea otters in the area. Little did he know he would return here time and again for the next 45 years.
At the time, when ecologists wrote and thought about food chains and food webs (the plants and animals connected to each other because they are each other’s food), they focused mostly on bottom-up forcing. This is the idea that the lower levels in such a chain, for example the abundance and productivity of plants, influence higher levels, such as the abundance of their grazers and in turn the predators that eat those grazers. The notion that the arrow of causality could also point the other way, top-down, with predators impacting herbivores impacting plants, was not much considered, if at all.
As described here, much of Estes’s career has revolved around showing the presence and importance of top-down forcing in food webs. It started with him noticing differences between islands with and without sea otter populations. Where sea otters were present, they preyed on sea urchins, which prevented kelp from being grazed, resulting in flourishing kelp “forests”. Without sea otters, the urchins thrived, grew large and munched their way through the kelp, leaving a barren underwater landscape.
“When ecologists wrote and thought about food chains and food webs [in the 1970s] the notion of top-down forcing was not much considered, if at all.”
From those initial observations, Estes chronologically explains how he expanded on those findings, showing this occurred around islands throughout the Aleutians, impacted other animals in this food web (fish, sea stars, even eagles), and affected the coevolution of chemical defences of kelp in response to predation by sea urchins. When the sea otter populations sharply declined in the 1990s, observations pointed to orcas having switched diet. In yet another example of a trophic cascade, Estes links this to a hangover from intensive whaling during the 1960s and ’70s. Bereft of their prey, orcas switched to smaller marine mammals, causing populations of one after the other species to crash. This, in turn, had knock-on effects elsewhere, showing how human impact can ripple through an ecosystem (see Whales, Whaling, and Ocean Ecosystems for more on this).
And the net is cast wider still, as further research showed that trophic cascades can cross from marine into terrestrial ecosystems. A final noteworthy achievement in this field was to bring together ecologists studying all of the Earth’s major ecosystems to exchange experiences and views, revealing that top-down forcing occurs in food webs throughout ecosystems, not just marine ones (that meeting resulted in the book Trophic Cascades: Predators, Prey, and the Changing Dynamics of Nature).
Doing observations and measurements on animals in the wild is – I can tell you from experience – a sometimes nerve-wracking undertaking. Estes lively details the many questions, worries, and unknowns as he embarked on new research projects. How do you measure sea otter abundance when there are no established protocols? How do you turn a hunch into a dataset that withstands academic scrutiny? How do you deal with logistical limitations? Without going into the nitty-gritty, he nevertheless provides plenty of details on hypotheses formulated, measuring protocols used, choices made, problems encountered, statistical analyses employed, and so forth. For general readers, some of this might be a bit much, but for biologists and ecologists (especially those just starting out) this will be a very interesting aspect of the book, and not a little bit reassuring. From the polished publications of senior researchers, you might almost forget that they had their own struggles back then.
“[…] for an author to write what we should stop focusing on, and where further research would be a waste of effort […] is something you do not see often.”
What really struck me is the almost searing honesty and openness with which Estes narrates how some of his ideas were wrong, how some of them were initially just suspicions that required more work to pass the gauntlet of peer review, and what the limitations of some of his conclusions are. I found his last chapter, in which he looks to the future of the field, particularly interesting. This kind of epilogue is not uncommon in academic books. But for an author to not just write what research should be done, but to also explicitly write what we should stop focusing on, and where further research would be a waste of effort, now that is something you do not see often.
Some of that soul-searching might have resulted from the unexpected controversy that erupted when Estes suggested that orcas were responsible for the sudden decline in sea otters as a result of earlier whaling. Dubbed the “megafaunal collapse hypothesis” in the literature, a segment of the marine science world did not take kindly to it at all (much to my surprise, to be honest). Estes here spends several chapters explaining what he based these ideas on and how he dealt with the subsequent fall-out. He does so with the care and circumspection of someone who has been scarred by the experience.
Serendipity is full of colourful anecdotes, as 45 years of fieldwork provides plenty of hair-raising fodder, but the book always has its eye firmly on the science. The way Estes describes it, his battle is far from over. The idea of top-down forcing in food chains is still not widely accepted in some quarters and plenty of scepticism remains. In my opinion, however, he convinces that trophic cascades are an important part of how ecosystems function. On top of that, Serendipity is both a fascinating memoir and an intimate and insightful look at how ecological research is done in practice. Readers interested in ecology and marine biology, in particular, will find much here to enjoy.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
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“The Omega Principle: Seafood and the Quest for a Long Life and a Healthier Planet“, written by Paul Greenberg, published by Penguin Press in July 2018 (hardback, 292 pages)
So, let’s get one thing straight right off the bat. Omega-3 fatty acids are part of a healthy diet and Greenberg is not out to disprove this. But in that one sentence lies the essence of the problem. Our eating patterns in the Western world (Greenberg’s narrative is US-centric, but this applies to much of the developed world) have shifted us away from that healthy diet towards one which is poor in these fatty acids. Greenberg draws heavily on the book Queen of Fats: Why Omega-3s Were Removed from the Western Diet and What We Can Do to Replace Them, which is recommended if you want to know more about this. Rather than address the root cause, a vast supplement industry has filled the gap with omega-3–rich fish oil pills. And this is where the claimed benefits of omega-3 become fishy.
As Greenberg explains, a loophole / feature of US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) regulations is that supplements are not beholden to the same strict rules as food and medicine. This allows supplement manufacturers to make the wildest claims without having to back them up with scientific evidence. Most studies to date have been so-called association studies which can establish correlations (between omega-3 and, say, cardiac health), but do not necessarily say anything about causation (do these fatty acids actually cause the changes in cardiac health?). Rigorous, randomised, double-blind clinical trials have only recently completed, or were still underway as this book went to print. But, more and more, the claims of the supplement industry do not stand up to scrutiny.
“a loophole / feature of US FDA regulations […] allows supplement manufacturers to make the wildest claims without having to back them up with scientific evidence”
Surprised? Understandably, I wasn’t. And if that was all that he had to say here, this book would not make much of a splash. Instead, Greenberg casts his net wider. With an estimated worth of some 15 billion US dollars, the fish oil supplement industry churns out a lot of fish oil, which has to come from somewhere. This particular industry is but the latest use the reduction industry has found for its products. The reduction industry?
“Reduction” is a euphemism for what happens to about a quarter of the fish caught globally – the smaller fish that we do not or only barely eat. Most of that is reduced, i.e. literally boiled and ground down to fishmeal, fertilizer, and oil. This is an industry that until not so long ago reduced whole whales to meat and oil, the latter destined to be used as lubricant and lamp oil (see The Sounding of the Whale: Science and Cetaceans in the Twentieth Century and my review of Energy: A Human History). And, in accordance with overall patterns in the fishing industry, it is an industry that has overfished and exhausted fish stock after fish stock (see also my review of All the Boats on the Ocean: How Government Subsidies Led to Global Overfishing), including the menhaden, profiled in the book The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America. Lately, the industry has started focusing on krill – the very same Norwegian company and boats that made an appearance in The Curious Life of Krill: A Conservation Story from the Bottom of the World also get a mention here.
“all these farty ruminants […] would emit far less methane if fed on a diet more natural to them, such as grass rather than fishmeal.”
Greenberg traces the threads further, describing what happens with the products of this reduction industry as it feeds the industrialised farming of livestock and, yes, other fish (see also the forthcoming The Fishmeal Revolution). Without being preachy, he describes an agricultural system out of whack with our dietary needs, supplying us with far too much protein we do not need in the form of excess meat, and too little of what we do need. And accompanying it are the numerous environmental problems in waterways and estuaries in the form of fertiliser runoff, algal blooms, episodes of hypoxia and anoxia (low or no oxygen in the water column), as well as the large contribution of methane emissions from all these farty ruminants to climate change. Though this should come as no surprise, I still found it remarkable to be reminded that they would emit far less methane if fed on a diet more natural to them, such as grass rather than fishmeal.
Despite the ruinous state of the world brought on by these industries, Greenberg has not penned a book of despair with The Omega Principle. In the last chapter, he profiles the many bold initiatives to change dietary patterns and develop healthier aquaculture practices (look out for mussels in your future). He even goes so far as to suggest how the energy sector and the fishing industry could work towards the same ends. Energy supplied by offshore wind farms instead of burning coal will reduce mercury emissions, making seafood healthier, while also offering habitat for (there they are again) mussel aquaculture. He acknowledges these have their own environmental price-tag, but pointedly asks the reader: which price would you rather pay? The take-home message (one that I keep hammering home since my review of The Irresponsible Pursuit of Paradise) being, of course, that there is always a price to pay.
Supplied with exemplary annotated notes, The Omega Principle is not afraid to branch out from its starting topic. Whether you have an interest in the efficacy or lack thereof of fish oil supplements, the seafood industry, or the health of our oceans, there is something in here for everyone. This is a wonderfully written, engaging reportage that comes highly recommended.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
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