Customer Reviews

Ocean's End Travels Through Endangered Seas

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Woodard takes us on a world tour of the crisis facing the oceans. From the Antarctic ice sheet to the Cancer alley of the lower Mississippi, Woodard travelled the globe, interviewing policy makers, scientists, and ordinary people affected by the environmental changes.

The style is both readable and rigorous. Woodard takes great pains to make clear what is known and what is not, and while clearly reaching "green" conclusions, he is careful to examine different perspectives. Woodard is a master storyteller. The people he comes across in his travels come to life as each chapter unwinds another environmental and economic tragedy in progress.

This is a very human book. Woodard doesn't wallow in the "fish-kissers" moral approach to environmentalism (what did that shrimp do to you?). Nor does he delve too deeply into the minutia of the science affecting a particular ecosystem (Do mollusks have brains?) Instead, he makes a compelling case for how the ongoing degradation affects both the local people who rely on a part of the oceans directly and human life as a whole.

I highly recommend this book to all concerned world citizens. We are past worrying about what is the "right" thing to do with respect to the oceans. We need to be concerned about what can be done to prevent a major disruption in the world's economic, climate, and food supply systems.

Ocean's End is one of the most compelling examples of how bad Coastal Zone policy has destroyed vast areas of ocean and shore. It is not too strong a point that human beings in recent history have behaved themselves very, very badly as they looted the seas and dumped their waste and industrial toxins down river or directly into the sea. I am using this book in my International Integrated Coastal Zone Management class as the first assigned textbook. (...)

Why? Because I want my graduate students to first see how wonderful the world's oceans and coastal zones are and secondly, how incredibly stupid and short sighted we can be as we mismanage our responsibilities as stewards of these ecosystems. Colin Woodward has done a wonderful job of narrating a gripping, exciting, and enfuriating story from the killing of the Black Sea to the plundering of the Newfoundland Grand Banks and all of the other case studies in between.

This is a book worth reading and also one that is compellingly interesting and enjoyable. Take it on your next trip or read it and then take my web-based graduate class in International Coastal Management. You'll be ahead of yourself!

Balanced and written smartly, this book is impressive for its depth and scope of coverage. Moreover, Woodard's style of allowing the facts and science to speak above the opinions and guesses (which perhaps out number the former) is compelling. Excellence from a first-time author.

Each chapter in this book tells a story illustrating a different crisis, and each gives something new to be outraged over. The stories are well-written, and Ocean's End gives the best summary of global warming that I have read. It is easy to understand (making the reader feel almost intelligent). I would recommend this to everyone, and wish there was a way to get this into high school curricula.

My only complaint is the summary. Woodard draws the reader's passions out, but doesn't suggest explicit ways to get involved in the issues. I ended up writing letters to my congressional representatives.

Read this book, and start your own letter campaign.

Excellent research, good writing and exceptionally important issues. Anyone who would like to learn more about the oceans, how they function and how we are destroying this life source, should read this book. The author also expertly describes the intimate ties between climate change and the oceans.

The publisher's are missing an opportunity by not supporting this work more; they are also not fulfilling their responsibility to the present and future generations of all living (and endangered) beasts.

Colin Woodard is a very finr reporter. He does what we hope a fine reporter will do, takes us to places we cannot visit ourselves and makes us understand those places, and to see ourselves more clearly. I suppose that it is not entirely surprising that some of the finest reporting being done today is on what is certainly the most important issue now facing the planet: the degradation of our environment. My other favorite of the spring crop of books is Diana Muir's surprisingly delightful Bullough's Pond, Economy and Ecosystem. Read Woodard, the book is a pleasure and you will learn a thing or two along the way. What more could you ask for?

I loved the book. It amazes me why the publisher didn't do more to get it out there. The lack of attention for these important titles is a crime. Great work Colin

Woodard's book does for the oceans what Mark Herstgaard's "Earth Odessy" did for the rest of the planet. It sounds the alarm of environment degredation. Lie Herstgaard, Woodard does not just sit around and speculate, he travelled to the world's environmental trouble spots and reports what he saw. Particularly chilling is his description of the "death" of the Black Sea and how a similar fate might befall the Gulf of Mexico. Like Herstgaard, Woodard offers solutions for the environmental crises he describes, however unlikely that they might ever be enacted by world governments. For the most part, this is quite a compelling book.

Wow, on the heals of reading Our Stolen Future, this was a bit of a shock...you know I had no idea the Black Sea was in such bad shape...I guess I really am out of touch with the world these days. Living in my own particular inner bubble, as it were, I seem to have missed out on some doings I used to pay a great deal of attention to.

I've long felt that we're slowly destroying our oceans and seas; I didn't realize we had actually accomplished it somewhere already. I strongly believe that nature is resilient and that it rights itself by restoring balance after we wreak havoc...but we also need to be taking some action and this book really brought that home for me. Ocean's End follows Woodward from the Black Sea forward on a global journey that touches on Newfoundland, the Mississippi Delta, Belize and the Great Barrier Reef, the Federated States of Micronesia, and finally to Antarctica.

In a compelling journey the documents the once pristine conditions, teeming with in all of these areas with their intensely interesting and varied ecosystems and the native peoples who lived (and still are trying to live) there, to the decline/destruction of these ecosystems and the empty bag they fisherman and villages in these places are left holding. He also takes care to point out that the decline of each ecosystem affects others and the world wide "chain" of them are all interconnected. Additionally, he points out that it's not a localized problem, many of the causes of an ecosystems decline happen far from the location where the ultimate damage is done (the Mississippi Delta for example).

Woodard really weaves it all together into a nice package that lays out the depth of the problem and he does give tentative solutions...if anything can successfully be done to "fix" this problem, it won't come easy or cheap and we definitely need to get away from the short-sighted profit driven solutions that have been developed in the past. I'd recommend this in a heart beat, if you don't think this is a serious problem, you should definitely read this book!

Ocean's End is an eyewitness account of the state of the world's oceans and provides readers with a call to action. The author spent well over a year traveling the world's seas and talking to fishermen, scientists, researchers and legislators alike. His account in Ocean's End provides a striking portrait of ecological disaster in the making.