The Prize Of All The Oceans

Download or read book The Prize of All the Oceans written by Glyndwr Williams and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 2001 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The power of the sea and man's fragility as he confronts it are terrifyingly portrayed in this rousing, historic round-the-world treasure hunt. In 1740, in the first year of war with Spain, Commodore George Anson set sail with a squadron of six British warships. His secret mission, prowling the world's longest, richest, most far-flung ocean trade route, was to seize the legendary Spanish galleon on her yearly voyage from Acapulco to Manila laden with Peruvian silver, "the prize of all the oceans." It was to be a four-year litany of hardship, disaster, mutiny, and, finally, heroism. Historian Glyn Williams's The Prize of All the Oceans shapes Anson's dramatic voyage into a powerful narrative threaded with incisive analysis and commentary. At its center is a colorful portrait of a commander who hauled ropes alongside his men, tended their sicknesses, and watched them die by the hundreds -- but never wavered in his resolve to capture the prize that would bring him untold wealth and return home triumphant. Glyn Williams tells the full story for the first time in a book that will rivet history buffs and armchair survivalists alike. - Back cover.

Download or read book Oceana written by Ted Danson and published by Rodale Books. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most people know Ted Danson as the affable bartender Sam Malone in the long-running television series Cheers. But fewer realize that over the course of the past two and a half decades, Danson has tirelessly devoted himself to the cause of heading off a looming global catastrophe—the massive destruction of our planet's oceanic biosystems and the complete collapse of the world's major commercial fisheries. In Oceana, Danson details his journey from joining a modest local protest in the mid-1980s to oppose offshore oil drilling near his Southern California neighborhood to his current status as one of the world's most influential oceanic environmental activists, testifying before congressional committees in Washington, D.C.; addressing the World Trade Organization in Zurich, Switzerland; and helping found Oceana, the largest organization in the world focused solely on ocean conservation. In his incisive, conversational voice, Danson describes what has happened to our oceans in just the past half-century, ranging from the ravages of overfishing and habitat destruction to the devastating effects of ocean acidification and the wasteful horrors of fish farms. Danson also shares the stage of Oceana with some of the world's most respected authorities in the fields of marine science, commercial fishing, and environmental law, as well as with other influential activists. Combining vivid, personal prose with an array of stunning graphics, charts, and photographs, Ocean powerfully illustrates the impending crises and offers solutions that may allow us to avert them, showing you the specific courses of action you can take to become active, responsible stewards of our planet's most precious resource—its oceans.

Download or read book In a Perfect Ocean written by Daniel Pauly and published by Washington : Island Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent decades have been marked by the decline or collapse of one fishery after another around the world, from swordfish in the North Atlantic to orange roughy in the South Pacific. While the effects of a collapse on local economies and fishing-dependent communities have generated much discussion, little attention has been paid to its impacts on the overall health of the ocean's ecosystems. In a Perfect Ocean: The State of Fisheries and Ecosystems in the North Atlantic Ocean presents the first empirical assessment of the status of ecosystems in the North Atlantic ocean. Drawing on a wide range of studies including original research conducted for this volume, the authors analyze 14 large marine ecosystems to provide an indisputable picture of an ocean whose ecology has been dramatically altered, resulting in a phenomenon described by the authors as "fishing down the food web." The book: provides a snapshot of the past health of the North Atlantic and compares it to its present status presents a rigorous scientific assessment based on the key criteria of fisheries catches, biomass, and trophic level considers the factors that have led to the current situation describes the policy options available for halting the decline offers recommendations for restoring the North Atlantic An original and powerful series of maps and charts illustrate where the effects of overfishing are the most pronounced and highlight the interactions among various factors contributing to the overall decline of the North Atlantic's ecosystems. This is the first in a series of assessments by the world's leading marine scientists, entitled "The State of the World's Oceans." In a Perfect Ocean: The State of Fisheries and Ecosystems in the North Atlantic Ocean is a landmark study, the first of its kind to make a comprehensive, ecosystem-based assessment of the North Atlantic Ocean, and will be essential reading for policymakers at the state, national, and international level concerned with fisheries management, as well for scientists, researchers, and activists concerned with marine issues or fishing and the fisheries industry.

Download or read book Smithsonian Ocean written by Deborah Cramer and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2008-10-07 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nobel Prize winner Al Gore wrote of Deborah Cramer's previous book Great Waters, "I urge everyone to read this book, to act on its message, and to pass on its teachings." Now Cramer offers a groundbreaking book for an even more urgent time. Our lives depend on the sea. As gifted science writer Deborah Cramer makes clear in this extraordinary volume, the ocean has been earth's lifeline for more than three and a half billion years. Life began in the scalding inferno of deep-sea hot springs. The first cell, the first plant, and the first animal were all born in the sea. Climate changes wrought by the sea created evolutionary pathways for mammals and gave rise to our human ancestors some 200,000 years ago. The one, interconnected sea still sustains us. Invisible plants in the ocean's sunlit surface give us air to breathe. Rushing currents supply water to the atmosphere's protective greenhouse and rain to dry land. But as Cramer reveals in this sweeping look at earth's biography, the vital partnership between earth and the life it nourishes has recently been disrupted. Today, a single terrestrial species, man, has begun to alter the health of the sea itself. The mark of humans on the seas is now everywhere—from the fertile waters of continental shelves to the icy reaches of the poles, from the dazzling diversity of coral reefs to the porous edge of estuaries. Even the open ocean bears clear traces of our harmful ways. Scientists believe human impact may have already sparked a catastrophic event that could change the sea and the earth irrevocably: the sixth mass planetary extinction on a scale unseen since the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But unlike the forces that caused previous extinctions, humankind can make a choice. We can choose the mark we wish to make and the legacy we leave behind. Written in the passionate tradition of Rachel Carson, Smithsonian Ocean is at once a book for our time and for the ages. Carson wrote: "One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself: What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?" Cramer's powerful and inspiring message is equally a wake-up call: "We hold earth's life-giving waters—and our future—in our hands." Our lives depend on the sea.

Download or read book The Ocean of Life written by Callum Roberts and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-05-24 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Silent Spring for oceans, written by "the Rachel Carson of the fish world" (The New York Times) Who can forget the sense of wonder with which they discovered the creatures of the deep? In this vibrant hymn to the sea, Callum Roberts—one of the world’s foremost conservation biologists—leads readers on a fascinating tour of mankind’s relationship to the sea, from the earliest traces of water on earth to the oceans as we know them today. In the process, Roberts looks at how the taming of the oceans has shaped human civilization and affected marine life. We have always been fish eaters, from the dawn of civilization, but in the last twenty years we have transformed the oceans beyond recognition. Putting our exploitation of the seas into historical context, Roberts offers a devastating account of the impact of modern fishing techniques, pollution, and climate change, and reveals what it would take to steer the right course while there is still time. Like Four Fish and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, The Ocean of Life takes a long view to tell a story in which each one of us has a role to play.

Download or read book The Boundless Sea written by David Abulafia and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 1115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "David Abulafia's new book guides readers along the world's greatest bodies of water to reveal their primary role in human history. The main protagonists are the three major oceans-the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian-which together comprise the majority of the earth's water and cover over half of its surface. Over time, as passage through them gradually extended and expanded, linking first islands and then continents, maritime networks developed, evolving from local exploration to lines of regional communication and commerce and eventually to major arteries. These waterways carried goods, plants, livestock, and of course people-free and enslaved-across vast expanses, transforming and ultimately linking irrevocably the economies and cultures of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas"--

Download or read book Atlas of Oceans written by John Farndon and published by Chartwell Books. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beautifully illustrated, packed with maps and diagrams, and containing up-to-date data on the status of endangered marine species, Atlas of Oceans is a celebration of Earth's vibrant and awe-inspiring oceans and seas and an urgent call to action to protect one of our planet's most vital resources. A tragedy is playing out beneath the surface of the world's bodies of marine waters, one that began long before the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Although many books have explored the environmental problems being faced on land, Atlas of Oceans is the first one for a general audience that examines how creatures of the marine environment are, if anything, more vulnerable than their land-based counterparts. Fully illustrated with stunning photography of the most interesting aquatic areas, including: â??Ocean currents and climate Changing shorelines Tropical and polar waters Layers in the ocean Black and Caspian Sea Wildlife and habitat focuses And many more! You will be introduced to the dazzling diversity of creatures that inhabit the oceans and seas, and to the nature of the problems they face. Special features focus on the threats to particular animals, plants, and habitats, as well as on specific issues like over-fishing, global warming, and pollution. The book also includes success stories, recommendations for what can be done to preserve ocean ecosystems, and a complete rundown of the most endangered species of marine life. Explore Earth's oceans and discover all that there is to preserve in Atlas of Oceans.