The High Seas
Olive Heffernan
Greystone Books, $32.95
That is the narrative throughout The High Seas: Greed, Power and the Battle for the Unclaimed Ocean, a fast-paced, thoroughly reported and deeply disquieting book by science journalist Olive Heffernan, also the founding chief editor of the journal Nature Climate Change.
The book begins by churning rapidly through the waves of history that brought us to today, including how we even define the high seas: all ocean waters more than 200 nautical miles from any country’s coastline. In many ways, the modern ocean grab was set in motion some 400 years ago. A bitter feud between Dutch and Portuguese traders culminated in a legal document called the Mare Liberum, or the “free seas,” which argues that the ocean is a vast global commons owned by no one.
Heffernan devotes a chapter each to different ways people are increasingly staking claims to international waters, an expansion called the Blue Acceleration. Some are hunting for new fishing grounds or prospecting for seafloor ores (SN: 5/4/20). Others are searching for new medicines in the DNA of deep-sea microbes, sponges or sea lilies. Still others are exploring how to boost the ocean’s carbon uptake to help slow climate change (SN: 4/26/24). Even the space industry wants a piece of the ocean — to create watery graveyards for defunct spacecraft.
2024-05-20 08:30:00
Article from www.sciencenews.org