The High Seas: Ambition, Power and Greed on the Unclaimed Ocean

(Hardback, Main)

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'A vital, fascinating, deeply researched exploration of Earth's last wilderness... Shocking and starkly illuminating - a must-read.' Gaia Vince

The ocean covers seventy per cent of the surface of our planet, and two thirds of this lie beyond national borders. Owned by all nations and no nation simultaneously, these waters are home to some of the richest and most biodiverse environments on the planet. But they are also home to exploitation on a scale that few of us can imagine.

Here, industry and economic progress rule and lax enforcement and apathy are the status quo. Out of sight and often out of mind, a battle rages to control, profit from, protect, or obliterate the world's largest, wildest commons. Heffernan sets sail on a journey to uncover the truth behind deeply exploitative fishing practices, investigate the potentially devastating impact of deep-sea mining, and hold to task the Silicon-valley interventionists whose solutions to climate change are often wildly optimistic, radically irresponsible or both.

The result is a forceful and deeply researched manifesto calling for the protection and preservation of this final frontier - the last vestiges of wilderness on Earth.

Reviews

'A vital, fascinating, deeply researched exploration of Earth's last wilderness, owned by us all and by no one. This is powerful and urgent reportage that rips the veil of romanticism to reveal a vast world of criminal and dangerous enterprise accelerating beyond our shores, threatening us all. Shocking and starkly illuminating - a must-read.' - Gaia Vince

'With energy equal to her profound subject, Heffernan boards many ships and journeys from the Arctic to the Antarctic to bring us an illuminating portrait of a world we rarely see and barely understand - and of the hidden forces that threaten to wreck it' - Robert Kunzig

'On the surface the seas roll on as always. But below, much is changing. And much more is at stake as humans seek plunder and profit beyond the reach of nations. In The High Seas, Olive Heffernan ably takes us into the history, the present, and the future of this largest and most mysterious realm of the planet.' - Carl Safina

'An urgently needed wake-up call about the threat to some of the planet's most vital but often overlooked ecosystems: the deep oceans. Profoundly informed, passionately written and thrillingly adventurous, Heffernan's book is both a masterful study in natural history and a forensic survey of the forces and activities that could cause irreparable harm to these precious resources.' - Philip Ball, author of CRITICAL MASS

'This book is the essential guide to the half of our blue planet we call the high seas, written by someone who has done more than almost anyone on earth in the last few years to understand the problems we face, and the solutions that might be available.' - Will McCallum, author & director of Greenpeace UK

Author Bio

Olive Heffernan is an award-winning science journalist. Her work has been published in Nature, WIRED, National Geographic, Guardian, New Scientist and BBC Wildlife, among other outlets. Now freelance, Olive spent a number of years with Nature covering climate change, including as first chief editor of the research journal Nature Climate Change. In 2019, she joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University as an adjunct lecturer, and in 2020 received a Giles St Aubyn Award for non-fiction from the Royal Society of Literature. Olive is currently funded by the Pulitzer Centre to report on ocean conservation in Europe. She lives by the sea in Ireland with her husband and children and spends her spare time cold-water swimming, paddle-boarding, kayaking, and rock-pooling.