Ebook: The Unnatural History of the Sea

Drawing on firsthand accounts of early explorers, pirates, merchants, fishers, and travelers, the book recreates the oceans of the past: waters teeming with whales, sea lions, sea otters, turtles, and giant fish. The abundance of marine life described by fifteenth century seafarers is almost unimaginable today, but [the author] both brings it alive and artfully traces its depletion. Collapsing fisheries, he shows, are simply the latest chapter in a long history of unfettered commercialization of the seas. The story does not end with an empty ocean. Instead, [he] describes how we might restore the splendor and prosperity of the seas through smarter management of our resources and some simple restraint. From the coasts of Florida to New Zealand, marine reserves have fostered spectacular recovery of plants and animals to levels not seen in a century. They prove that history need not repeat itself: we can leave the oceans richer than we found them.-Dust jacket.;Explorers and exploiters in the age of plenty: End of innocence; Origins of intensive fishing; Newfound lands; More fish than water; Plunder of the Caribbean; Age of merchant adventures; Whaling, the first global industry; To the ends of the Earth for seals; Great fisheries of Europe; First trawling revolution; Dawn of industrial fishing -- Modern era of industrial fishing: Inexhaustible sea; Legacy of whaling; Emptying European seas; Downfall of king cod; Slow death of an estuary, Chesapeake Bay; Collapse of coral; Shifting baselines; Ghost habitats; Hunting on the high plains of the open sea; Violating the last great wilderness -- Once and future ocean: No place left to hide; Barbequed jellyfish or swordfish steak?; Reinventing fishery management; Return of abundance; Future of fish.