Destroying the Oceans

The world’s oceans form the great flywheel that steadies the global engine and keeps it running regularly. An effective flywheel must be perfectly balanced and this book shows how human activity, while taking advantage of this balance, is causing the wheel to wobble. A runaway flywheel can be fatally dangerous. Levete describes the effects of some of our threatening activities – coral in crisis through pollution and tourism, carbonically acidified and warming waters losing their oxygen and ability to support marine life, shrinking icecaps and mangroves (? can’t quite reading his writing. A) and the vital role of phytoplankton as well as the more familiar overfishing and oilslicks. Unfortunately the lack of obvious commitment to its burden in the somewhat pedestrian text is nearly as depressing as its content; nor are the pictures anything special. And in a series branded ‘Protecting Our Planet’, shouldn’t the reader expect a bit more than two terminal pages about not littering the beach and checking ‘the packaging’ (I kid you not) of fish to ensure its sustainability? So, while the volume title is justified (and I mean just) the series titles is badly let down – as is the reader.