Ocean's End

About this book

"Most of us have grown up thinking of the oceans as somehow limitless, beyond our power to pollute or even change. But frequent headlines announcing exhausted fishing grounds, sea level rise and dead coral reefs tell us that the oceans are more like a vast island sea - bounded and increasingly vulnerable. The multiple, inter-locking crisis of the world's oceans have become the major environmental predicament of our time." "Ocean's End is an eyewitness account of the state of the world's oceans and a landmark call to action. After a year and a half spent criss-crossing the world's seas, Colin Woodard tells a fascinating tale of the fishermen and scientists, officials and activists, divers and sailors, religious missionaries and government ministers whose daily lives are spent confronting the oceans' problems. He tells the story of the residents of former resort towns who must cope with the astonishing death of the Black Sea; the destruction of Grand Banks cod fishery, and with it the basis of Newfoundland society; scientists trying to understand and stop the decline of Belize's spectacular coral reefs; how reengineering for flood control turned the Mississippi River into a toxic gumbo that creates huge "dead zones" in the Gulf of Mexico; the people of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, who face the complete submersion of their country by rising sea levels; and Antarctic scientists who witnessed the calving of a piece of ice shelf the size of Rhode Island, due to global warming."--Jacket.