The Nonfiction Library Book Club

Discuss What the Wild Sea Can Be by Helen Scales.

The acclaimed marine biologist and author of The Brilliant Abyss examines the existential threats the world's ocean will face in the coming decades and offers cautious optimism for much of the abundant life within. No matter where we live, "we are all ocean people," Helen Scales emphatically observes in her bracing yet hopeful exploration of the future of the ocean. Beginning with its fascinating deep history, Scales links past to present to show how the prehistoric ocean ecology was already working in ways similar to the ocean of today. In elegant, evocative prose, she takes readers into the realms of animals that epitomize today's increasingly challenging conditions. Ocean life everywhere is on the move as seas warm, and warm waters are an existential threat to emperor penguins, whose mating grounds in Antarctica are collapsing. Shark populations-critical to balanced ecosystems-have shrunk by 71 per cent since the 1970s, largely the result of massive and oft-unregulated industrial fishing. 

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