AS YOU sip your free drinks at Club Tropicana and contemplate a quick dip in
the ocean, you may want to brush up on the pleasures and perils that await you.
For pleasures, you could start with Reefscape by Rosaleen Love (Joseph
Henry Press, $24.95, ISBN 0309072603). Love describes a highly personal
exploration of the Great Barrier Reef and the people it has touched, from locals
to visiting marine biologists.
Love is an excellent raconteuse. Her stories bring alive the colours and
creatures of the reef, so you can immerse yourself in this remarkable world. But
ultimately she cannot get past her own Zen-like thesis: words cannot truly
capture the ambience of the place. Dipping languorously into the book works
fine, but taking it all in one go is rather like a long-haul flight with an
enthusiastic New Age neighbour.
Blue Frontier: Saving America’s living seas (W. H. Freeman,
$24.95, ISBN 0716737159) by David Helvarg charts a seaweed—rather
than a grassroots— revolution. Helvarg makes a compelling case for the
opportunities of the marine realm, the threats it faces and how local
communities across the US have taken the initiative in conservation, without
waiting for a lead from Washington. He offers the Blue Frontier as a
place where America can revive her pioneer spirit, but set against the political
backdrop he describes, you wonder whether an attempt by America to recapture her
youth would actually turn into a mid-life crisis.
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Finally, when it comes to perils of the deep, allow yourself to enjoy a
shiver of fear from Thomas Allen’s Shark Attacks: Their causes and
avoidance (The Lyons Press, $24.95, ISBN 1585741744. Like the
caring, sharing New Man of the 1990s, we have had the New Shark, cause
célèbre of conservationists, for a while now. But Allen recaptures
some of the primal thrill, balanced with biological awe, that makes sharks so
special. He makes it OK to feel the wonder and personal terror sparked by
stories of encounters with these animals.
Sharks provide a marine-mammal culling service that is acceptable to
environmentalists—and seemingly seldom resented by those who, very
occasionally, are unlucky enough to be caught in the crossfire. Allen argues
that as top predators, sharks weed out the weak or those poorly adapted to their
environment. When we venture beneath the waves, that’s us.