Subject Guide: Oceans

In conjunction with the San Francisco Ocean Film Festival running this week from February 19^th to the 22^nd, this month's subject guide looks at some of the variety of books in our library on the history, study, exploration, exploitation, and conservation of the world's oceans. While the seas might seem so vast as to be impervious to human activity, in actuality centuries of exploitation and misuse have seriously degraded their condition through the wholesale removal of marine life and the obliteration of ecosystems. Public awareness about the state of our oceans and the possibilities of their restoration is growing thanks to groups like the San Francisco Ocean Film Festival and other organizations and individuals discussed below. The film festival is a unique opportunity to learn about the environmental, social, and cultural importance of marine resources, as well as to be entertained and inspired by the wonder of the seas. It includes over 35 documentary, fictional, and animated films from around the world, and each program is followed by in-depth discussions with filmmakers and content experts. Be sure to check out the festival schedule at www.oceanfilmfest.org, and find even more books about the oceans in our library catalog at library.thoreau.org. See you there. I'm probably going Sunday.

Callum Roberts. The Unnatural History of the Sea (2007)

From its beginnings in the eleventh century to the giant fishing industries of today, marine conservation biologist Callum Roberts looks at the history of intensive and uncontrolled commercial exploitation of ocean resources and its destructive effects. What emerges is a portrait of dangerously degraded marine ecosystems that stand in sharp contrast to the richer and more productive oceans of the past filled with their abundance of varied life. It is not “a requiem of the sea," however, as Roberts writes optimistically about the possibility of restoring the seas' splendor through international networks of protected reserves, fishing reforms, and simple human constraint.

Dallas Murphy. To Follow the Water: Exploring the Ocean to Discover Climate, From the Gulf Stream to the Blue Beyond (2007)

The many ocean currents transporting heat around the world play a significant role in stabilizing and moderating climate. Emphasizing how the ocean's internal mechanisms and their complex interactions with the atmosphere are vital for any understanding of climate change, Dallas Murphy writes about the history of ocean exploration and the scientific efforts to understand these currents. The book is also a portrait of the lives of the scientists involved in trying to understand ocean dynamics today as Murphy travels with them and observes their work in waters around the globe.

H. Bruce Franklin. The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America (2007)

Few people have heard of the menhaden - an oily, foul smelling, tiny-boned, nearly inedible little fish. But they have always been an integral part of America's agricultural and industrial history, and the tonnage of them caught along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts exceeds that of all other species combined. They also play an integral ecological role as a major component of the diet of many other marine animals and as a natural filter keeping inshore waters clear of algal blooms. Presenting a detailed case study of marine exploitation, this book examines the factors that have led today to the needless overfishing of the menhaden and the brink of ecological catastrophe.

David Helvarg. 50 Ways to Save the Ocean (2006)

Written by David Helvarg, environmental journalist and president of the Blue Frontier Campaign (www.bluefront.org), and illustrated by Jim Toomey, the cartoonist of Sherman's Lagoon, 50 Ways is a practical guide to simple everyday actions and choices you can make to enjoy and to help restore and protect our imperilled oceans. Making the connections between everyday habits and the health of the seas, it includes guidance on such issues as: the fish you should and shouldn't eat; using less plastic; joining in a coastal cleanup; conserving water; how and where to vacation; storm drains and driveway run-off; protecting local water tables; proper diving, surfing, and tidepool etiquette; and supporting local marine education.

David Helvarg. The Ocean and Coastal Conservation Guide: The Blue Movement Directory(2005)

A guide to the over 2,000 local, regional, national, and international groups that make up the growing “Blue Movement,” defined as those “organizations and institutions that are working to understand, protect, and restore our ocean and coastal areas.” It provides a convenient way to find out what organizations are active on what issues in a particular part of the country, while also listing governmental agencies involved in coastal and marine oversight, major marine schools and science centers, and national ocean sanctuaries and marine parks.

John Pernetta. Firefly Guide to the Oceans (2004)

Written by the Project Director for the Global Environment Facility of the United Nations Environment Programme, this is a concise and richly illustrated guide to all aspects of the world's oceans and seas. Learn about their formation, geology, history, exploration, life, resources, and more. It includes an atlas of maps of the ocean basins, ocean currents, and other physical features, as well as an encyclopedia of marine fauna and flaura.

John G. Field, Gotthilf Hempel, & Colin P. Summerhayes. Oceans 2020: Science, Trends, and the Challenge of Sustainability (2002)

Sponsored by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research, and the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment, this book presents a comprehensive assessement of the most important scientific and societal issues that are likely to arise in ocean management in the next two decades. Outlining a path to rational ocean governance, scientists and researchers analyze the state of marine science and technology, identify issues for sustainable development, and evaluate the capability of scientists, governments, and private-sector stakeholders to respond to these issues. A useful source of information for policymakers, government officials, resource managers, scientists, the media, and all those concerned with the current and future health of the oceans.

New Book - Mission, Inc.

Social Venture Network recently donated a copy of Mission, Inc.: the Practitioner's Guide to Social Enterprise, the latest title in The Social Venture Network Book Series. Thank you SVN. From the publisher's description:

In this groundbreaking guide, social entrepreneurs Kevin Lynch and Julius Walls draw on their own extensive experiences and those of twenty other social enterprise leaders to focus on the fundamental blocking and tackling tactics that make the difference between success and failure. Exploring the many paradoxes that can hamstring social enterprises, the authors explain how starting and running a social enterprise requires leaders to adopt an entirely different mindset and often a wholly different perspective on the day-to-day choices they’re forced to make. Likewise, Walls and Lynch help readers grapple with a different set of expectations from employees, investors, customers, and the community. For social enterprise practitioners, these expectations present an added layer of difficulty – but they can also offer unique advantages, which the authors explain how to leverage. Whether readers are looking for guidance on finding and hiring talent, marketing, finances, or scaling, this practical, accessible guide offers clear and compelling answers that light the way.

Book Request

If anybody reading this blog has a spare copy of Money Well Spent by Paul Brest and Hal Harvey that they would like to donate, we would be very greatful. We have had a patron request for it.

New Books - from SF Ocean Film Festival

The San Francisco Ocean Film Festival donated several books about the seas and marine conservation to the library this week, including:

David Helvarg's 50 Ways to Save the Ocean - a practical guide to the daily choices we can make to help restore and preserve the seas,

Jon Bowermaster's Descending the Dragon - his account of his 800-mile sea kayak expedition along the northern coast of Vietnam, and

Douglas Whynott's Giant Bluefin - an account of the New England bluefin tuna harpoon fishery, a fish greatly prized in Japan for sushi and sashimi.

Also: Stephen Harrigan's Water and Light, David Mercy's Berserk: My Voyage to the Antarctic in a Twenty-Seven-Foot Sailboat, Robert Kurson's Shadow Divers, and John Long's The Big Drop.

Be sure to check out their website for information about their film festival coming up this February 19 to 22 with over 35 documentary, fictional, and animated films from around the world. Thank you SF Ocean Film Festival.

Your Donations Bring New Books to the Library

Thanks to generous donations through our Giving Tree program over the past six weeks, we have been able to purchase a number of books to add to the library. Your support helps to keep our collection current, comprehensive, and relevant. We are going to keep the tree up, so if you would like to make a small donation you can bring it to the library during regular hours, or you can contact Bruce DeMartini. Thank you, and here are the new books for the Library:

Michael Mann & Lee R. Kump. Dire Predictions - Understanding Global Warming: The extensively illustrated and highly accessible guide to the findings of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

James Lovelock. The Revenge of Gaia - Earth's Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity: A perspective on climate change from the originator of the Gaia theory, which sees the Earth as a single, self-regulating entity subject to disturbance by human activity.

Tim Flannerty. The Weather Makers - How Man is Changing the Climate and What it Means for Life on Earth: The influential overview of climate science that helped bring the topic of global warming to national prominence.

Thomas L. Friedman. Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How it Can Renew America: Influential and controversial New York Times columnist looks at the global environmental crisis and calls for a renewal of United States leadership.

William McDonough & Michael Braungart. Cradle to Cradle - Remaking the Way We Make Things: "Waste equals food" is the guiding principle behind this revolutionary reexamination of the way we design and manufacture almost everything.

Rachel Carson. Silent Spring: The fortieth anniversary edition of the classic that launched the environmental movement; with and introduction by Linda Lear and an afterword by Edward O. Wilson.

Aldo Leopold. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There: Special commemorative edition of the landmark work of nature writing and environmental ethics.

Paul Hawken. Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being: A chronicle of the worldwide social movements today confronting issues like the destruction of the environment, the abuses of free-market fundamentalism, social justice, and the loss of indigenous cultures.

Book Discussion - Hot, Flat, and Crowded

Wednesday, February 25^th
In the library 12:30 to 1:30

Come join your friends and co-workers to share your thoughts on the host of environmental challenges facing the world today and on one perspective in particular. The Whole Earth Library will be hosting a discussion of Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How it Can Renew America by controversial and influential New York Times columnist Thomas L.Friedman. Extending his discussion of globalization into the realm of global warming, Friedman follows the connections between the environment, the economy, energy, and national security in what he terms the coming "Energy-Climate Era." In the face of environmental crisis, he sees hope in renewed American political and moral leadership as well as in transformational innovation unleashed by the American marketplace.

Please let us know at library@thoreau.org if you are interested in attending and/or if you need help finding a copy.

Note: If you’re interested in the subject matter and don’t have time to read the book, please feel free to join the discussion.

From the publisher's description of the book:

Thomas L. Friedman's no. 1 bestseller The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see globalization in a new way. Now Friedman brings a fresh outlook to the crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy—both of which could poison our world if we do not act quickly and collectively. His argument speaks to all of us who are concerned about the state of America in the global future.

Friedman proposes that an ambitious national strategy—which he calls "Geo-Greenism"—is not only what we need to save the planet from overheating; it is what we need to make America healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive, and more secure.

As in The World Is Flat, he explains a new era—the Energy-Climate era—through an illuminating account of recent events. He shows how 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the flattening of the world by the Internet (which brought 3 billion new consumers onto the world stage) have combined to bring climate and energy issues to Main Street. But they have not gone very far down Main Street; the much-touted "green revolution" has hardly begun. With all that in mind, Friedman sets out the clean-technology breakthroughs we, and the world, will need; he shows that the ET (Energy Technology) revolution will be both transformative and disruptive; and he explains why America must lead this revolution—with the first Green President and a Green New Deal, spurred by the Greenest Generation.

Subject Guide: Polar Regions

Largely on the periphery of human concerns, most of the world has long thought of the polar regions as remote, barren, and fatally inhospitable. Human populations have adapted to live and thrive there, however, and two centuries of exploration, scientific and otherwise, have begun to unlock the regions' secrets. For the past century, the growing human presence has also meant a growth in the exploitation of natural resources and increased direct pressure on their fragile ecologies and native cultures. Indirectly, distant human activity threatens the regions with pollution and climate change. Average winter temperatures in the interior of Alaska have risen seven degrees Fahrenheit since the 1950s, a change that has seen shrinking glaciers, earlier springs, increasing precipitation, animal populations under stress, and entire villages relocated because of rising water levels. The amount of summer ice at the North Pole has steadily declined since 1979 and recent scientific studies show that the Arctic Ocean is losing sea ice up to thirty years ahead of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predictions. New predictions now hold that summer sea ice could completely disappear between 2013 and 2040 – something that has not occurred in more than a million years. WWF research shows also that levels of global warming predicted over the next forty years will lead to winter sea-ice coverage around Antarctica declining by up to thirty per cent in some key areas. These changes endanger the populations adapted to live there and raise new political and commercial issues as countries scramble for newly opened up Arctic mineral riches, the possibility opens up for oil drilling in Antarctica, and the Northwest Passage begins to develop into a major shipping route. These books look at the nature, history, and cultures of the polar regions as they face this uncertain future.

Kieran Mulvaney. At the Ends of the Earth: A History of the Polar Regions. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2001.

This book presents a comprehensive overview of the natural and human history of the Arctic and Antarctic, the two similar yet very distinct polar regions. Following cycles of exploration and exploitation, it covers human interaction with the areas from the earliest legends of prehistory, through eighteenth and nineteenth century European exploration, to more recent issues of oil and gas drilling, commercial whaling and sealing, pollution, tourism, ozone depletion, and global warming. Seemingly remote, Mulvaney shows how they have been affected and shaped directly by human activity as well as indirectly by events and trends thousands of miles away.

Charles Wohlforth. The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change. New York: North Point Press, 2004.

Alaskan journalist Charles Wohlforth focuses on how two cultures are responding to the dramatic changes brought by global warming to the Arctic: the Inupiat Eskimos who live and hunt on the Arctic Ocean coast and the Western scientists who have come to conduct climate and ecological research. Both a portrait of life in an isolated part of the world and a clearly written account of ongoing scientific endeavor, it illuminates two different ways of seeing and comprehending the natural world. Finding points of interaction between the two groups,Wohlforth demonstrates some unexpected commonalities and suggests that elements of both ways of knowing about the environment will be needed to understand and deal with climate change.

Marla Cone. Silent Snow: The Slow Poisoning of the Arctic. New York: Grove Press, 2005.

While the Arctic is widely thought to be isolated and the last great unspoiled territory on Earth, it is in reality the location of some of the most contaminated people and animals on the planet as chemicals and pesticides from thousands of miles away in North America, Europe, and Asia travel there by wind and water and are concentrated through the food web. Awarded a grant to conduct an exhaustive study of its deteriorating environment by the Pew Charitable Trusts, Los Angeles Times environmental journalist Marla Cone traveled across the region, from Greenland to the Aleutian Islands, interacting with scientists and the native peoples. She reports on the implications of this foreign pollution for the survival of entire species and cultures.

Sebastian Copeland. Antarctica: The Global Warning. San Rafael, CA: Earth Aware, 2007.

Temperatures in the Antarctic Peninsula over the last sixty years have increased by a rate of up to five times the global average. Sebastian Copeland, an award-winning photographer and environmental activist, journeyed to Antarctica on the icebreaker The Ice Lady Patagonia in 2006 and 2007 for Global Green USA and Green Cross International to document the peninsula's changing landscape and threatened wildlife. His collection of over a hundred color photographs is accompanied by scientific data and personal insights about climate change including the question of why the polar regions are melting at an increasingly rapid pace.

Kieran Mulvaney. The Whaling Season: An Inside Account of the Struggle to Stop Commercial Whaling. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003.

Founding director of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, science and environmental writer Kieran Mulvaney recounts his involvement leading four expeditions in Greenpeace's campaign to end commercial whaling in the waters surrounding Antarctica. An examination of how the unpopular activity of whaling manages to survive today, Mulvaney places the expeditions in the context of the history of whaling, Antarctic exploration, Greenpeace, and scientific and political efforts at marine conservation.

Terrie M. Williams. The Hunter's Breath: On Expedition with the Weddell Seals of the Antarctic. New York: M. Evans and Co., 2004.

The Weddell seal is the only mammal able to survive year-round in the harsh Antarctic environment, and it is capable of venturing to deep ice caves beyond the reach of human divers. Biologist Terrie Williams and seven other scientists spent six years studying these mysterious creatures, and her account reveals their discoveries and provides a vivid portrait of the challenges and excitement of conducting research in the coldest, driest, and windiest continent on the planet.

Richard E. Byrd. Alone. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003.

Famed for having made the first flights over the North and South Poles and for his exploration of the Antarctic, Richard Byrd led his second expedition of the polar continent in 1934. As part of that effort, he spent five winter months isolated and alone operating the Bolling Advance Weather Base and almost failed to survive the ordeal after suffering carbon monoxide poisoning from a defective stove. A bestseller first published in 1938, this book is his personal account of his struggle and rescue.