The best books about the ocean and seas

Urbina gives a shocking and vital account of the human and environmental troubles that are taking place across the ocean, out of sight beyond the horizon. From cases of modern-day slavery and murder aboard fishing vessels to the tricks played by whaling ships and cruise ships to avoid detection of their environmental crimes.

Eugenie Clark wrote this book about the early days of her amazing career as a marine biologist and shark specialist (she was later nicknamed the ‘Shark Lady’). In the 1940s, not only was she unusual for being a female scientist, but she set off on intrepid journeys around the world, studying fish around tiny islands across the Pacific and in the Red Sea, long before it was developed as a tourist destination. This book gives a glorious view of a pioneering scientist and what ocean science used to be like. I was lucky enough to meet her a few years before she died in her nineties. She was incredibly warm and generous, and was clearly still driven by the same boundless curiosity and adventurous spirit that you will see written across the pages of her book.

In 1940, author John Steinbeck accompanied marine biologist, Ed Rickets (the inspiration for the character Doc in his book Cannery Row), on a six-week research expedition to the Gulf of California, also known as the Sea of Cortez, onboard the converted sardine fishing boat, The Western Flyer. This book is based on notes written by Rickets, edited by Steinbeck, and gives fascinating insights into the animals they were finding and collecting as well as the two men’s philosophical outlook on marine ecology. A quote I especially like is:

It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again.

I used to think of whales as a great success story in the history of humans and our plundering of the ocean – after all, these fabulous beasts were swiftly transformed from a heavily hunted, industrial resource into protected, cherished wildlife. But as we are learning more all the time, things are more complicated than that in the ocean. As Giggs eloquently tells us, humanity has replaced whaling with many other modern troubles for the great whales. Her writing is vivid and fresh, at times a sweeping personal narrative, for instance as she contemplates a dying whale stranded on an Australian beach, and at times brilliantly intimate and zoomed in, as we examine with her the hitch-hiking creatures that ride around on whales, or consider what is going on behind those apparently knowing eyes of theirs.

This is one of the books about the ocean I have read the most. It’s science fiction, but based on much of what was the cutting edge science at the time, giving a fascinating insight into the Victorian state of knowledge about the ocean. I’ve noticed how my empathy with the characters has changed over time. On first reading as a teenager, I liked the adventures of Professor Aronnax, the marine scientist held captive by the renegade Captain Nemo on his amazing submarine, the Nautilus, as they explore the undersea world together. Returning to the book later, after I myself had become a marine biologist and studied many parts of the ocean, I felt a much closer connection to Aronnax and shared his dilemma over whether to stay with Nemo, and keep on exploring the ocean in ways he never imagined possible, or try to escape the clutches of this mysterious and dangerous character. Do I chose freedom or science?