The Ocean Reader: History, Culture, Politics ed. by Eric Paul Roorda

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Ocean Reader: History, Culture, Politics ed. by Eric Paul Roorda Stanley D. Brunn The Ocean Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Eric Paul Roorda, ed. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020. Pp. xix+523, color and black & white illustrations, footnotes. $119.95, hardcover, ISBN 978-1-4780-0600-1. $24.95, paperback, ISBN 978-1-4780-0696-1. About three-fourths of the planet is composed of water, an aquae incognitae for scholars. Eric Paul Roorda's twelve-chapter reader goes a long way to educate us about familiar and unfamiliar topics. It includes short statements (two to four pages each) about 103 topics, supplemented by 69 black/white and 11 color figures and 131 suggested readings, all certain to appeal to readers, whether novices or seasoned specialists. The collection includes selections on diverse topics including ancient [End Page 127] sea activities, slave ships, shipwrecks, pirates, coelacanth (living fossil fish), missionaries to Micronesia, Basque whaling, Islamic sea power and hajj, coral reef disappearance, ocean poetry, Chinese explorations, South Pacific whaling, Cape Horn violent weather, war in the Pacific, Marianas Trench, and Somali pirates. Many of the authors' names are familiar: Herodotus, Leonardo da Vinci, Zheng He, Ibn Battuta, Christopher Columbus, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, William Beebe, Sylvia Earle, and Anne Anna Brassey. Reading this book is likely to raise two questions in the minds of many readers: why we know so little about ocean topics, and how we can learn more. The answer to the first is rather simple, namely, we know little because we did/do not think in-depth learning about oceans was/is important. More important were/are the places/environments where we live and interact, not some watery universe where few humans live. Today we probably even know more about some other planetary surfaces than some of the earth's ocean space. This negligent perspective is indeed sad with a result being that there has been, and probably still remains, a lack of caring and understanding about oceans and their impact on human history and what they mean to understanding the earth's presents and futures. While aquae incognitae exist and persist in the sciences and humanities, "something" is happening in these places and spaces twenty-four seven that affects land/continental environments and human livelihood. And when some major unexpected event happens, terrestrial scientists seek to play a "catch-up game" to figure out what to do. Giving a higher priority to outer-space explorations and frontiers is evident in the ocean knowledge base and the role of oceans in global warming, effective disaster preparedness, biodiversity loss, increased ocean pollution and acidification, and economic losses (fish, mining, etc.). Ocean-knowledge communities beg for more understanding not only about circumnavigation efforts past and present, the submerged cargoes from shipwrecks in Cape Horn waters, ocean cable constructions, and maritime conflicts, but also DNA tests of former slave-carrying ships off West and Southern Africa and the Caribbean and shipwrecks in the Indian Ocean, the Straits of Malacca, South China Sea, Insular Pacific, and North Atlantic. Roorda's book presents a multitude of ocean topics that can be inserted into lectures, laboratory exercises, team projects, and research agendas. Even a casual reading should challenge the inspiring instructor [End Page 128] teaching environmental history, ancient cultures, historical cartography, environmental GIS mapping, conflict and security, and disaster preparedness. There is much to learn about these three-dimensional worlds and migrating aquatic communities through geo-mapping and photographing ocean terrains and life. Our knowledge base about oceans' surfaces and depths will expand with more discoveries and explorations, research grants, museum displays, scholarly journals, and courses and multidisciplinary degree programs with marine foci. Each discovery piques one's curiosity and appetite. Adventurous and creative members of the local, regional, and global geography communities need to seize on this "expanding research frontier" to come up with some new projections, mapping images using GIS, and satellite imagery to study historical, contemporary, and future ocean topics. Maps will help in understanding some of the early trans-ocean migrations, the resource bases, ocean tourism (surface and subsurface), and ocean environments meriting international protection. We also need atlases showing more than dead zones, shipping...