Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #454262 in Books
• Published on: 1996-12-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 458 pages

Synopsis
Sounds a warning about the decline of the world's marine resources due to commercial fishing and other causes and the imminent extinction of some species.

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

Customer Reviews

One of the most important books of the 90s
I cannot, absolutely cannot, stress of how much import this book is. Safina writes of politics, poverty, economics, history, technical minutiae, and biological science with the flair of a poet - combined with passages that will make you weep for their ability to communicate the visceral experience of what it's like beneath the water. It's not just a book about marine biology - it's an extended essay on the forces that have shaped civilization at the end of the millennium and its relation to the world at large. The hardest thing is to get across how compulsively readable it is - digressions into issues involving privitization of land and the beuracratical nightmare of listing a species as endangered are communicated so lucidly, cleverly, and with such humanity that the book never devloves into that category called boring that would cause most people to skip it. Having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, I wish everyone in that region would read Safina's exhaustive overview of the destruction of the salmon fisheries. Only now, later in life, do I have a clear picture of what those headlines I saw as a kid even meant.

And somewhere within all this, you discover that not only is Safina an objective scientist, an environmentalist who cares for the well being of other humans and is actually concerned for the plight of those who make their living off the seas; he is also a gifted writer.

I kid you not. This is a book about marine science. It made me bawl like a baby. It is, despite it's complex issues, so innately human. And that's what makes it essential. Safina is no tree hugging environmentalist - he appraises it with a keen eye for its beauty and its terror but is also a firece guardian - of the system which allows us to live with it. He has extraordinary empathy for those right minded individuals who have lost their jobs due to overfishing and the political nightmare that has followed. What provokes his anger is how that system is abused; and what emerges is that it is never a case of the usual solutions that pit conservationist vs. fisherman - it is a case of the entire economic situation we live in writ large that has led to our abuse of the oceans.

And despite the unrelenting nightmare you face during his journey, as it seems the whole ocean is vanishing before your eyes; there is hope, in the unlikeliest of places and his ability to essay that hope is miraculous and affirming.

Howard Hall, the legendary underwater photographer, said something like: if you were to start diving today you'd see a world you couldn't imagine... But it's nothing like what you would have seen only thirty years ago. I think any sceptic, or even the most hardened of political conservatives who believe the environment is designed to withstand relentless punishment, cannot disregard the arguements made in the book. I started diving only recently. I'm a young guy. Chances are I won't be able to ever see the great coral reefs of the South Pacific - they won't be there. This book will convince you that our children will not be able to experience the oceans and its life that we have still today; unless we change the essential underpinnings of how we relate to each other as a society we will not be able to restore this.

Enough ranting. Just get this book, read it, and try to tell me you weren't fascinated. This single book will change your worldview, and teach you in so many disciplines, that you can't ignore it. And please, some company publish this in the UK for the Brits pronto... Until then, Mr. Safina is my hero and I hope he writes more.

amazing book!
I can not emphasize enough what a wonderful book this is. It is a great, entertaining and educational read!!

Not only a song, but a beautiful song for the blue ocean
Safina weaves a masterful story of our oceans and the precarious relationship between sea and man. Unlike traditional "environmental" works, Safina tells the story of three disparate communities and their relationship to a dying sea. The use of language, the intriguing personal accounts actually EXPERIENCED by the author, and a deep understanding of the complexity of the sea are halmarks of this work.

The book is divided into three large sections covering the following regions: New England and bluefin tuna, the Pacific Northwest and salmon, and the southwest Pacific and aquarium fishes. Each section is self contained and focuses on the specific region targeted by the section. Safina, fortunately, does not attempt to create a mega tome describing all the ocean's problems. Rather, he focuses are three extremely well researched areas that, assumingly, typify the problems with the sea.

Safina has a unique talent for storytelling that conveys deep meanings and complex relationships. The need for such a simple, and yet complex, analysis is similar to the simple, and yet complex, issues that surround ocean depletion itself. That is, Safina is not a typical "environmentalist" with the "answers." He is a concerned person who tells the complex story of how a "simple" event like overfishing can occur in our "modern" world. The complex and interrelated dynamics of economy, politics, science, families, occupations, and age together lead to the "simple" problems that Safina describes. As becomes very evident in the book, one can only understand the problem, and then presumably take action, when one understands and accepts the complex dynamics that created the problem. Safina steers well clear of the traditional, simplified "environmentalist" stance that points the proverbial finger at single sources like "government," clear cut loggers, long line fishers, and cyanide fisherman.

The epilogue alone is a masterpiece of understanding and simplicity. Like the land ethic, Safina identifies the equal importance of a sea ethic. Safina's solutions are refreshing for anyone who doubts the government's ability to objectively protect our resources. Rather, Safina seems to leave the protection to local peoples -- the people directly impacted by the issues and with vested interests in the outcomes. Through local actions, not distant government mandates, our heritage and resources can survive.