Oceans And Society

This unique textbook presents an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of marine studies, exploring the dynamic relationship between people and the marine environment. Emphasizing the human dimension of coastal and ocean issues, the book provides an innovative examination of the complex marine–human environment dynamics by drawing on social science and humanities approaches. Applying these interdisciplinary approaches, the textbook addresses key challenges facing the marine environment, including changing climate, fisheries, aquaculture, marine pollution, energy production, and management of areas beyond national jurisdiction. While leading with a human dimension approach to these challenges, the chapters are all firmly grounded in foundational knowledge about coastal and ocean environments and processes. The textbook also includes examples of professional or academic areas of specialization within marine studies such as social and environmental justice, governance, global perspectives, traditional ecological knowledge and management, entrepreneurship, community development, conservation, and the blue economy. Ultimately, the book provides the first cohesive resource on marine studies to educate students, train interdisciplinary marine leaders, inspire new knowledge about people and the sea, generate innovative solutions for sustainable oceans, and build capacity for a new generation of marine-focused professionals. Oceans and Society is essential reading for students on marine studies courses, as well as those studying marine governance, policy, conservation, and law more broadly. It will also be of great interest to students, researchers, and professionals interested in applying interdisciplinary approaches to environmental challenges.

“Oceans and Society: Blue Planet” (www.oceansandsociety.org) is a global initiative bringing together many ocean-observing programmes with a societal benefit focus. It was created in 2011 as a Task within the Work Plan of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO). The Geneva-based GEO is a voluntary partnership of some 90 governments and 77 intergovernmental, international, and regional organisations. It is committed to integrating global observations through strengthened cooperation and coordination among global observing systems and research programmes. Blue Planet held its inaugural Symposium in Ilhabela, Brazil, in November 2012. Participants from some 25 countries, representing a diverse array of international programmes, presented and discussed issues including the coordination of and information access from global ocean observing systems for open ocean, coastal and inland ecosystems; operational ocean forecasting; applications of observations for sustainable fishery and aquaculture; and capacity building. A major outcome of the Symposium was the production of this book. The contributions to the Symposium served as a starting point, and were developed to provide a comprehensive overview of the scope and breadth of the “Oceans and Society: Blue Planet” initiative. Targeted at all stakeholders within the ocean and marine community, this volume discusses current activities and future actions and raises awareness for the further development and implementation of the Blue Planet agenda. Readers will learn more about ocean observations, how they can be integrated, and their applications to benefit society as a whole.

Much of human experience can be distilled to saltwater: tears, sweat, and an enduring connection to the sea. In Vast Expanses, Helen M. Rozwadowski weaves a cultural, environmental, and geopolitical history of that relationship, a journey of tides and titanic forces reaching around the globe and across geological and evolutionary time. Our ancient connections with the sea have developed and multiplied through industrialization and globalization, a trajectory that runs counter to Western depictions of the ocean as a place remote from and immune to human influence. Rozwadowski argues that knowledge about the oceans—created through work and play, scientific investigation, and also through human ambitions for profiting from the sea—has played a central role in defining our relationship with this vast, trackless, and opaque place. It has helped us to exploit marine resources, control ocean space, extend imperial or national power, and attempt to refashion the sea into a more tractable arena for human activity. But while deepening knowledge of the ocean has animated and strengthened connections between people and the world’s seas, to understand this history we must address questions of how, by whom, and why knowledge of the ocean was created and used—and how we create and use this knowledge today. Only then can we can forge a healthier relationship with our future sea.

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. The ocean comprises the largest object on our planet. Retelling human history from an oceanic rather than terrestrial point of view unsettles our relationship with the natural environment. Our engagement with the world's oceans can be destructive, as with today's deluge of plastic trash and acidification, but the mismatch between small bodies and vast seas also emphasizes the frailty and resilience of human experience. From ancient stories of shipwrecked sailors to the containerized future of 21st-century commerce, Ocean splashes the histories we thought we knew into salty and unfamiliar places. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

What is happening in our oceans? By describing their main elements, this book shows how and why the oceans are being transformed, and suggests possible future scenarios to address this complex, yet often-asked, question. The ocean is being dramatically transformed, but the magnitude of this transformation remains unclear since the ocean is largely inaccessible and still unknown: there is more information about the outer universe than about the deepest parts of our oceans. The author, a marine biologist with extensive research experience, offers a holistic view of our oceans. Focusing on fishing, pollution and the effects of climate change, he identifies and describes the changes occurring in all marine ecosystems, and discusses the long-passed state of equilibrium.

Human health and well-being are tied to the vitality of the global ocean and coastal systems on which so many live and rely. We engage with these extraordinary environments to enhance both our health and our well-being. But, we need to recognize that introducing contaminants and otherwise altering these ocean systems can harm human health and well-being in significant and substantial ways. These are complex, challenging, and critically important themes. How the human relationship to the oceans evolves in coming decades may be one of the most important connections in understanding our personal and social well-being. Yet, our understanding of this relationship is far too limited. This remarkable volume brings experts from diverse disciplines and builds a workable understanding of breadth and depth of the processes – both social and environmental – that will help us to limit future costs and enhance the benefits of sustainable marine systems. In particular, the authors have developed a shared view that the global coastal environment is under threat through intensified natural resource utilization, as well as changes to global climate and other environmental systems. All these changes contribute individually, but more importantly cumulatively, to higher risks for public health and to the global burden of disease. This pioneering book will be of value to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses in public health, environmental, economic, and policy fields. Additionally, the treatment of these complex systems is of essential value to the policy community responsible for these questions and to the broader audience for whom these issues are more directly connected to their own health and well-being. "The seas across this planet and their effects on human society and its destiny are a fascinating subject for analysis and insights derived from intellectual inquiry. This diverse and complex subject necessarily requires a blending of knowledge from different disciplines, which the authors of this volume have achieved with remarkable success." "The following pages in this volume are written in a lucid and very readable style, and provide a wealth of knowledge and insightful analysis, which is a rare amalgam of multi-disciplinary perspectives and unique lines of intellectual inquiry. It is valuable to get a volume such as this, which appeals as much to a non-specialist reader as it does to those who are specialists in the diverse but interconnected subjects covered in this volume." (From the "Foreword" written by, R K Pachauri, Director General, TERI and Chairman, IPCC)

The trans-disciplinary thematic areas of oceans management and policy require stocktaking of the state of knowledge on ecosystem services being derived from coastal and marine areas. Recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) especially Goals 14 and 15 explicitly focus on this. This Handbook brings together a carefully chosen set of world-class contributions from ecology, economics, and other development science and attempts to provide policy relevant scientific information on ecosystem services from marine and coastal ecosystems, nuances of economic valuation, relevant legal and sociological response policies for effective management of marine areas for enhanced human well being. The contributors focus on the possible nexus of science-society and science-policy with the objective of informing on decision makers of the governmental agencies, business and industry and civil society in general with respect to sustainable management of Oceans.

Humanity can make short work of the oceans’ creatures. In 1741, hungry explorers discovered herds of Steller’s sea cow in the Bering Strait, and in less than thirty years, the amiable beast had been harpooned into extinction. It’s a classic story, but a key fact is often omitted. Bering Island was the last redoubt of a species that had been decimated by hunting and habitat loss years before the explorers set sail. As Callum M. Roberts reveals in The Unnatural History of the Sea, the oceans’ bounty didn’t disappear overnight. While today’s fishing industry is ruthlessly efficient, intense exploitation began not in the modern era, or even with the dawn of industrialization, but in the eleventh century in medieval Europe. Roberts explores this long and colorful history of commercial fishing, taking readers around the world and through the centuries to witness the transformation of the seas. 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 Roberts 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, Roberts 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.