Book name- OCEAN: HOW TO SAVE EARTH’S LAST WILDERNESS
Author- Sir David Attenborough and Colin Butfield
Published by- John Murray, Price- Rs 1,299
In 2017, “in the far Russian Arctic, 100,000 walruses [were] hauled out on a remote beach” and because of lack of space, “hundreds were forced on to the cliffs”. Unlike their poetic other, a confidence trickster, who, along with a mean carpenter, betrayed and devoured eight young oysters on a briny beach in Lewis Carroll’s eponymous poem, “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” the Russian walruses met a different fate. Because of their poor eyesight, hundreds fell to their death from the cliffs. Walruses, or “tooth-walking sea horse[s]”, need firm ice platforms for resting and for performing their “astonishing range of vocal acrobatics — from whistles and honks to rasps and bangs, depending on the intention of the singer”. But since the Arctic is “warming more quickly than any other region in the planet”, we need to worry about the future of walruses.
Skilfully poised between facts and possibilities, David Attenborough and Colin Butfield’s Ocean offers an ocean of scientific discoveries and wonders, which bring alive marine habitats abounding with species, known and unknown, as a 2017 UN document stated that the “‘ocean contains 200,000 identified species but the actual numbers may lie in the millions’”. The vast blue corridors girdling the earth and constituting 70% of our planet contain amazing biodiverse habitats, such as the coral reef, the veritable “‘rainforests of the sea’”, kelp fronds which resemble terrestrial forests, and mangroves which, poetically, “hang between two worlds”. Besides forests, such hotspots grow in the open ocean, better known as “global commons”, in the deep ocean floors with their “stupendous snowfall[s]”, in extinct volcanoes transformed into seamounts and oceanic islands, in the wild Southern Ocean with no human habitation, and in the unique “other-worldliness” of the Arctic.
Be it the 2007 discovery of a bowhead whale carrying a spear in its flank for over 115 years, or the near extinction of the much-revered Hawaiian green turtle, or the vast depletion of the orange roughy, the book offers many cautionary tales of human damage, including bleaching and permeation of plastics and pollutants in the marine ecosystem. But since the authors acquaint us with compelling conservation efforts made by scientists, researchers, activists, and by indigenous and coastal communities, we know that the ocean can recover and help in sinking the carbon. Drawing attention to the complexities underlying the 2022 Montreal promise of protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030, the book rekindles the debate on sustainability while renewing its faith in global endeavours, such as the moratorium on whaling, the ban on sealing, the signing of the Antarctica Treaty, and the creation of marine reserves. For us in India, the book urges us to rethink why we have sacrificed our mangroves at the altar of a neoliberal developmental model spurred by private corporations and sanctified by courts.
A visionary book authored by one of the finest living legends, Ocean is a must read for all. There is much to gain from its enthralling stories of hope and wisdom written in a prose which is at its mesmerising best.