Overview

In this “essential guide to the half of our blue planet we call the high seas” (Will McCallum, author of How to Give Up Plastic), one of the world’s leading voices on the issue tracks the race to exploit and protect our last frontier. Two thirds of the world’s oceans lie beyond national borders. Owned by all nations and no nation simultaneously, the high seas are home to some of the richest and most biodiverse environments on the planet. But they are also home to exploitation on a scale that few of us have imagined. Here, out of sight and out of mind, industry and economic progress rule and lax enforcement and apathy are the status quo, underscored by a battle to control, profit from, protect, or obliterate the world’s largest, wildest commons. In this book, Heffernan uncovers the truth behind deeply exploitative fishing practices, investigates the potentially devastating impact of deep-sea mining, and holds to task the Silicon Valley interventionists whose solutions to climate change are often wildly optimistic, radically irresponsible, or both. This is a powerful and deeply researched manifesto calling for the protection and preservation of this final frontier.

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9781771645881

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Reviews

"""[The High Seas] serves as a valuable wake-up call....[A] welcome addition to the urgent debate about the ocean's future."" --Helen Czerski, Science ""[F]ast-paced, thoroughly reported and deeply disquieting....[O]ne of the book's biggest takeaways: We've established a precarious new type of ocean ecosystem, and it is going to be incredibly difficult -- maybe impossible -- to juggle all the priorities while also protecting ocean health and biodiversity."" --Science News ""In the vein of Ian Urbina's The Outlaw Ocean and Helen Scales' The Brilliant Abyss comes Olive Heffernan's The High Seas: an exploration of the breakneck industrialization occurring in the global ocean today. In clear prose, Heffernan investigates the ongoing experiments to bend the high seas to society's will as well as the unknown benefits and risks that may result. An important, timely book."" --Laura Trethewey, author of The Deepest Map ""This is a vital book at a deeply contested moment in history for our oceans and humanity at large. The High Seas provides a wide-ranging glimpse into the beauty and complexity of our planet's most distant watery worlds. With beautifully rendered portraits and a thoughtful examination of the science, Olive Heffernan has accomplished something extraordinary: bringing sense and rhythm to the contested, perilous, and often chaotic realm of our most remote seas."" --Karen Pinchin, author of Kings of Their Own Ocean ""On the surface the seas roll on as always. But below, much is changing. And much more is at stake as humans seek plunder and profit beyond the reach of nations. In The High Seas, Olive Heffernan ably takes us into the history, the present, and the future of this largest and most mysterious realm of the planet."" --Carl Safina, author of Song for the Blue Ocean, Alfie and Me, and other books ""This book is the best introduction I have ever read to the biological, technical, and institutional issues connected with the High Seas and the exploitation of its resources, all presented in an easy-going but informative style. A gem of a book!"" --Daniel Pauly ""An urgently needed wakeup call about the threat to some of the planet's most vital but often overlooked ecosystems: the deep oceans. Profoundly informed, passionately written and thrillingly adventurous, Heffernan's book is both a masterful study in natural history and a forensic survey of the forces and activities that could cause irreparable harm to these precious resources."" --Philip Ball ""This book is the essential guide to the half of our blue planet we call the high seas, written by someone who has done more than almost anyone on Earth in the last few years to understand the problems we face, and the solutions that might be available. --Will McCallum, author and director of Greenpeace UK and author of How to Give Up Plastic: A Guide to Changing the World, One Plastic Bottle at a Time ""A vital, fascinating, deeply researched exploration of Earth's last wilderness, owned by us all and by no one. This is powerful and urgent reportage that rips the veil of romanticism to reveal a vast world of criminal and dangerous enterprise accelerating beyond our shores, threatening us all. Shocking and starkly illuminating--a must-read."" --Gaia Vince, author of Transcendence and Nomad Century ""With energy equal to her profound subject, Heffernan boards many ships and journeys from the Arctic to the Antarctic to bring(s) us an illuminating portrait of a world we rarely see and barely understand--and of the hidden forces that threaten to wreck it."" --Robert Kunzig, author of Mapping the Deep: the Extraordinary Story of Ocean Science"

"""On the surface the seas roll on as always. But below, much is changing. And much more is at stake as humans seek plunder and profit beyond the reach of nations. In The High Seas, Olive Heffernan ably takes us into the history, the present, and the future of this largest and most mysterious realm of the planet."" --Carl Safina, author of Song for the Blue Ocean, Alfie and Me, and other books ""This book is the best introduction I have ever read to the biological, technical, and institutional issues connected with the High Seas and the exploitation of its resources, all presented in an easy-going but informative style. A gem of a book!"" --Daniel Pauly ""An urgently needed wakeup call about the threat to some of the planet's most vital but often overlooked ecosystems: the deep oceans. Profoundly informed, passionately written and thrillingly adventurous, Heffernan's book is both a masterful study in natural history and a forensic survey of the forces and activities that could cause irreparable harm to these precious resources."" --Philip Ball ""This book is the essential guide to the half of our blue planet we call the high seas, written by someone who has done more than almost anyone on Earth in the last few years to understand the problems we face, and the solutions that might be available. --Will McCallum, author and director of Greenpeace UK and author of How to Give Up Plastic: A Guide to Changing the World, One Plastic Bottle at a Time ""A vital, fascinating, deeply researched exploration of Earth's last wilderness, owned by us all and by no one. This is powerful and urgent reportage that rips the veil of romanticism to reveal a vast world of criminal and dangerous enterprise accelerating beyond our shores, threatening us all. Shocking and starkly illuminating--a must-read."" --Gaia Vince, author of Transcendence and Nomad Century ""With energy equal to her profound subject, Heffernan boards many ships and journeys from the Arctic to the Antarctic to bring(s) us an illuminating portrait of a world we rarely see and barely understand--and of the hidden forces that threaten to wreck it."" --Robert Kunzig, author of Mapping the Deep: the Extraordinary Story of Ocean Science"

"""This book is the essential guide to the half of our blue planet we call the high seas, written by someone who has done more than almost anyone on Earth in the last few years to understand the problems we face, and the solutions that might be available. --Will McCallum, author and director of Greenpeace UK and author of How to Give Up Plastic: A Guide to Changing the World, One Plastic Bottle at a Time ""A vital, fascinating, deeply researched exploration of Earth's last wilderness, owned by us all and by no one. This is powerful and urgent reportage that rips the veil of romanticism to reveal a vast world of criminal and dangerous enterprise accelerating beyond our shores, threatening us all. Shocking and starkly illuminating--a must-read."" --Gaia Vince, author of Transcendence and Nomad Century ""With energy equal to her profound subject, Heffernan boards many ships and journeys from the Arctic to the Antarctic to bring(s) us an illuminating portrait of a world we rarely see and barely understand--and of the hidden forces that threaten to wreck it."" --Robert Kunzig, author of Mapping the Deep: the Extraordinary Story of Ocean Science"

Author Information

Olive Heffernan is a science journalist with 20 years' experience as a reporter and an editor. Her writing on ocean science and climate change has been published in Nature, WIRED, Scientific American, National Geographic, New Scientist andBBC Wildlife, among many others. A marine biologist by training, she spent the early part of her career researching Atlantic fish stocks before leaving academia to pursue a career in journalism. She was founding chief editor of Nature Climate Change and chief editor of The Marine Scientist magazine and has also been an online news and opinion editor on climate change at Nature. In 2019, she joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University as an adjunct lecturer, and in 2020 received a Giles St Aubyn Award for non-fiction from the Royal Society of Literature. She lives by the sea in Ireland with her husband and children.

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