The Mortal Sea

It would have been impossible to write my book without Jeff Boslter’s The Mortal Sea.

With evocative prose and argumentative verve, Bolster’s book relates the deep, centuries-long history of overfishing while probing the depths of the interdependent relationship between humanity and the ocean. The Mortal Sea is one of the finest exemplars of environmental history by bringing together the narrative skill and argumentation of the historian with the insights of the ecologist and marine biologist.

Bolster reminds us that some of the most important connections existed not just across the sea, but with it.  

Since the sea covers more than 70% of the globe, environmental historians ought to pay attention to it too, and Bolster does so like no other. He is himself a sailor and writes with an easy familiarity about storms and swells, codfish, and currents. The story here is about overfishing in the North Atlantic, beginning in European waters in medieval times, but moving quickly to the seas between Cape Cod and Newfoundland in the 17th to early 20th centuries. A wonderful blend of conventional historians’ sources with insights from marine biology.