Song for the Blue Ocean - Softcover

Safina, Carl

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805061223 ISBN 13: 9780805061222

Publisher: Holt Paperbacks, 1999

Synopsis

Part odyssey, part pilgrimage, this epic personal narrative follows the author's exploration of coasts, islands, reefs, and the sea's abyssal depths. Scientist and fisherman Carl Safina takes readers on a global journey of discovery, probing for truth about the world's changing seas, deftly weaving adventure, science, and political analysis.

About this title

Review:

"Safina's Song is the Silent Spring for our time. The book is a page turner. But unlike the phantasmagorical novels of Michael Crichton or Peter Benchley, where a little science is thrown in to give the plot an aura of verisimilitude, Safina's book is all true and wilder and more frightening. . . . I loved this book." --Richard Ellis, Los Angeles Times

"[Safina's] bright new voice joins that influential chorus, which includes Rachel Carson and Jacques Cousteau, of scientists turned eloquent ocean advocates." --Harry E. Demarest, San Francisco Chronicle

"Engrossing and illuminating . . . passionate and enthralling narrative . . . [A] landmark book." --Thurston Clarke, The New York Times Book Review

"You will never think about fish-or the ocean-the same way again." --Sylvia Earle, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association

"If you love the ocean, read this book." --Big Game Fishing Journal

From the Author:

Travel and true adventure through the world's oceans.
In Song for the Blue Ocean we go on a global journey through the world's changing seas, combining adventure, science, politics, and insights into the human condition. We accompany people whose lives in and on the oceans are a drama of clashing ambitions and a daily struggle for existence. We fish with commercial and subsistence fishers, we dive with research scientists, we walk through ancient forests where salmon spawn, and fly over vast clearcuts that have simultaneously taken the trees, the salmon streams, and the foreseeable future. We visit the shark fin shops in Hong Kong for a glimpse of what China's new-found capitalism means for oceans around the globe. We sleep alongside Islamic separatists who seek desperately to protect their coral reefs.

My empathy here is as much with people as wild nature, and I convey the dilemmas intertwining both. In the end, we find reason for hopefulness in a very unlikely place--a dangerous, heavily armed fishing village on a remote island near the Indonesian border.

Today's changing oceans pull together universal themes about resources, autonomy, economies, ideologies, and human nature that weave the context of our life and times. Although I believe this book is the most thorough and up-to-date account of the world's seas, it is in many ways about much more than the oceans.

Richard Ellis, author of Men and Whales, and Deep Atlantic, had this to say about my book: "I once thought about writing a book about the depletion and destruction of the oceans. Am I glad I didn't! Carl Safina has done what I could only dream about: he has written a plaintive, sensitive, caring, intelligent, indignant paean to his beloved waters and their threatened inhabitants. Safina takes us into the embattled world of the New England fisherman; to the salmon rivers of the American west, and to the once-pristine and lovely South Pacific reefs. This book will make you mad as hell; it will make you marvel at the wonders he describes (I love the way he writes about bluefin tuna!) and it will make you glad to realize that there is someone like Carl Safina who cares enough to devote his life to the preservation of the earth's most fragile and misunderstood ecosystems."

I hope you enjoy the experience of reading Song for the Blue Ocean.
--Carl Safina

About this edition

• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0805061223
• ISBN 13: 9780805061222
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480