Sea Change: A Message of the Oceans

by Sylvia A. Earle

Book Overview

In 1952, at age sixteen, Sylvia Earle--then a budding marine biologist--borrowed a friend's copper diving helmet, compressor, and pump and slipped below the waters of a Florida river. It was her first... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0449910652
• ISBN13: 9780449910658
• Release Date: May 1996
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.83 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Excellent story about the Oceans and the environment

Sylvia really opened my eyes to the fragile nature of our environment and to the beauty and vastness of the oceans. I highly recommend this book for anyone with the slightest interest in our environment and nature. This book will make you interested in learning and doing more for the environment.

Learn from one of the best

Sea Change is a marine science book written by a master marine scientists. There are very few people around these days who seem to be in full command (or nearly so) of their subject. Sylvia Earle appears to be one of these rare specimens. I think that young scientists also can learn quite a bit through the experiences and personal insights of great scholars like Dr. Earle, insights that usually are not shared with all students, insights, that are normally learned by often painfull experience. Sea Change shows us the development of a science, of an important part of our world, our society and it shows us the personal development of a fascinating woman. If you want to know scientific details about marine science, go and buy a textbook. If you want to know how one of the greatest marine scientists thinks, buy Sea Change.

Incredible! A true visit to the real world of the oceans.

An inspiring story on the world of marine science. Sea Change takes you to the roots marine studies, and shows the rise of a marine biologist from a girl at the beach to a woman with a submarine. Anyone even faintly interested in the environment in general will love this book and it's hands on experiences with the world. Sea Change gives life lessons, and shows the real world of the sea, not the usual fairy tale of unbounding resources and perfect harmony. For the true marine fan, this book can serve as a novel as well as a learning experience. This is a delightful book that is easy to read and secretly educational. It enriches the mind while painting the imagination. I would reccomend this book to anyone willing to hear me out.

A great tale of the ocean's wonders

Sylvia Earle's Sea Change: A Message of the Oceans serves as a clarion call to humans to take a closer look at the life blood of planet earth, the oceans. The thoughtful mixture of wonder and concern outlines Earle's years of study and thousands of hours working, playing and living beneath the ocean's surface. Tales of discovery and enlightenment are interspersed with easy to read discussions of geology, biology, engineering, law and policy, to weave a tale advocating better stewardship of our ocean resources. A biologist by formal training and an explorer and adventurer by natural curiosity, Earle reminds us of what we learned (but may have never fully grasped) in elementary school, that the planet which we inhabit is covered mostly in water. Earle begins by providing the reader first with a sense of geologic time over which the earth has taken shape and the oceans have formed. She points out that post-Columbus man has occupied this planet for a mere four seconds in the geologic year representing the earth's 4.6 billion year history. She notes modern oceanography, from its origin in the 1870s with the expedition of the HMS Challenger, covers less than one second on that time scale. Having humbled human knowledge of the seas on a temporal scale, Earle assuages our species ego touting the great advancements that have enabled humans to descend, albeit briefly, to the very deepest part of the oceans. She revels in the fact that she grew up in an era that saw Cousteau and Gagnan develop self contained underwater breathing apparatus (scuba) equipment. Divers, unfettered from the bulky diving helmets and shackled air hoses, could now have significantly greater access to, "where most of the living action on Earth is concentrated: underwater." She relishes the milestone achieved when U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh and Swiss engineer Jacques Picard descended in the bathysphere Trieste to a depth of 35,800 feet in the Marianas Trench. The visit to the deepest point in the ocean in 1960 in many ways the out paced the ascent of Mt. Everest. The author recounts her own fascination and relationship with the sea from her days as a child on the coasts of New Jersey and Florida to her study of marine flora in the Gulf of Mexico as a graduate student. In self-deprecating style, Earle outlines the series of circumstances that led from her participation in an otherwise all male oceanographic expedition in 1964 to an underwater living experiment in 1970 "manned" by an all-women research team. As her curiosity grew and technological development allowed, Earle began venturing into those depths and activities that had not yet hosted human activities, including early observations of humpback whales off the coast of Hawaii to the exploration of 1250 foot depths in an untethered specially designed diving suit. Each adventure strengthened her conviction that the ocean as a living system merited further research to increase human understandi

A wake up call to care for the world's marine resources.

Sylvia Earle's Sea Change: A Message of the Oceans serves as a clarion call to humans to take a closer look at the life blood of planet earth, the oceans. The thoughtful mixture of wonder and concern outlines Earle's years of study and thousands of hours working, playing and living beneath the ocean's surface. Tales of discovery and enlightenment are interspersed with easy to read discussions of geology, biology, engineering, law and policy, to weave a tale advocating better stewardship of our ocean resources. A biologist by formal training and an explorer and adventurer by natural curiosity, Earle reminds us of what we learned (but may have never fully grasped) in elementary school, that the planet which we inhabit is covered mostly in water. Earle begins by providing the reader first with a sense of geologic time over which the earth has taken shape and the oceans have formed. She points out that post-Columbus man has occupied this planet for a mere four seconds in the geologic year representing the earth's 4.6 billion year history. She notes modern oceanography, from its origin in the 1870s with the expedition of the HMS Challenger, covers less than one second on that time scale. Having humbled human knowledge of the seas on a temporal scale, Earle assuages our species ego touting the great advancements that have enabled humans to descend, albeit briefly, to the very deepest part of the oceans. She revels in the fact that she grew up in an era that saw Cousteau and Gagnan develop self contained underwater breathing apparatus (scuba) equipment. Divers, unfettered from the bulky diving helmets and shackled air hoses, could now have significantly greater access to, "where most of the living action on Earth is concentrated: underwater." She relishes the milestone achieved when U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh and Swiss engineer Jacques Picard descended in the bathysphere Trieste to a depth of 35,800 feet in the Marianas Trench. The visit to the deepest point in the ocean in 1960 in many ways the out paced the ascent of Mt. Everest. The author recounts her own fascination and relationship with the sea from her days as a child on the coasts of New Jersey and Florida to her study of marine flora in the Gulf of Mexico as a graduate student. In self-deprecating style, Earle outlines the series of circumstances that led from her participation in an otherwise all male oceanographic expedition in 1964 to an underwater living experiment in 1970 "manned" by an all-women research team. As her curiosity grew and technological development allowed, Earle began venturing into those depths and activities that had not yet hosted human activities, including early observations of humpback whales off the coast of Hawaii to the exploration of 1250 foot depths in an untethered specially designed diving suit. Each adventure strengthened her conviction that the ocean as a living system merited further research to increase human unde