Ocean Country
One Woman's Voyage from Peril to Hope in her Quest To Save the Seas
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
Ocean Country is an adventure story, a call to action, and a poetic meditation on the state of the seas. But most importantly it is the story of finding true hope in the midst of one of the greatest crises to face humankind, the rapidly degrading state of our environment. After a near-drowning accident in which she was temporarily paralyzed, Liz Cunningham crisscrosses the globe in an effort to understand the threats to our dazzling but endangered oceans. This intimate account charts her thrilling journey through unexpected encounters with conservationists, fishermen, sea nomads, and scientists in the Mediterranean, Sulawesi, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and Papua, New Guinea.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this earnest and elegiac volume, Cunningham (Talking Politics) describes her long relationship with the ocean, including her early experiences "surfing in a whitewater kayak" and her later work with conservation groups around the world. When Cunningham moved from New York City to the West Coast decades ago, she considered California "ocean country." Over time she realized that the term encompassed the "entire planet," as the seas are "critical to each and every form of life on earth." Here, she offers both personal and professional perspectives, for example railing against the environmental impact of the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico and British Petroleum's "blithe understatement of the scope of the crisis." That disaster's grave and tremendous effects on marine life birds, sea turtles, dolphins, and whales has rippled far and wide. Likening oceans to "water gardens," Cunningham encourages people to be more careful in how they treat them, reasoning that nobody would throw "motor oil or untreated sewage or the contents of a garbage can" into their home garden. With genuine emotion and great pragmatism, Cunningham makes passionate pleas for the continued health of the planet.
