Oceans: The Threats to our Sea and What Can Be Done to turn the Tide

This unique tie-in to the major motion picture Oceans—coming this April from Disney & National Geographic—explores the health of our oceans, and what we can do to improve it.

More than 75 percent of the globe is covered by the oceans. It is sometimes difficult to understand why it is called Planet Earth rather than Planet Ocean. Since half the world’s human population lives within a stone’s throw of an ocean coastline, the oceans’ health is increasingly important. Rich with resources and potential—as a source of renewable energy, new drugs, drinking water—for years we have treated them as both infinite and undamageable. But they are not.

Over-fishing, climate change, pollution, acidification, and more have put the world’s oceans and marine life at great risk.

Oceans gathers some of the most insightful visionaries, explorers, and ocean lovers— marine biologists, politicians, environmentalists, fishermen, sportsmen, deep divers, and more—in a unique anthology, in which each speaks to a unique aspect of our world’s most dimly understood dimension.

More About the Movie

So in this companion to the Disney movie Oceans, released in April 2010. The editor candidly writes that jolting readers into environmental activism is his purpose. Credible for this task due to his stature as a documentary film producer and author (Birthplace of the Winds, 2001),

For ocean author Bowermaster enlisted dozens of contributors. Those who, in several pages apiece, address particular environmental problems of the oceans. Equal in their advocacy of urgency, they are quite unequal in expository quality.

Richard Ellis

Renowned for his works on marine biology, writer Richard Ellis observes the plight of bluefin tuna with his usual cogency and depth. So alas, actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s superficial save-the-planet thoughts barely buoy a sentence. I mean let alone a paragraph according to the author!

Between their extremes of compositional ability range most of the book: Ocean’s by Bowermaster’s and his recruits. Some are professional oceanographers; others are nonscientific activists who express their advocacy in avocations for rowing, sailing, swimming, or fishing; one battler accosts Japanese whalers on the high seas; and one advances the blue agenda as administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Bowermaster concludes with contact information to environmental organizations for motivated readers. –Gilbert Taylor