Book Readings: Week 10

For my Marine Resources class (GEOG 646) at SF State this semester I am reading The Sea Around Us, by Rachel Carson (1951), and The Tide: The Science and Stories Behind the Greatest Force on Earth, by Hugh Aldersey-Williams (2016). Please check out my first Book Reading blog post to read about why I chose these two books and why I chose to blog about them concurrently.

Since this is my final week blogging about these two books, there wasn't much left to read! All that was left for me to read this week was the final chapter in The Tide and the afterword in The Sea Around Us. Because these readings were pretty light, I will end this final blog post on my Marine Resources with some final thoughts on both books.

In The Tide this week, Aldersey-Williams focuses on how coastlines will be affected in the future due to sea level rise and erosion. Indeed, the title of his final chapter is "Diluvion." The word is an obscure term that refers to formerly solid land which is now lost under the high-tide line.

Aldersey-Williams returns to his local coast for this chapter: the coast of Norfolk in England. He talk about how locals believe that the erosion of the seaside cliffs at Hopton-on-Sea has been accelerating due to changes in tidal currents that came about due efforts made to enlarge a harbor located nearby, just up the coast. The author explains that to prevent further erosion, large boulders are being placed in the waters at the foot of the cliffs, so that they can block the incoming wave energy and protect the cliffs from being battered.

Aldersey-Williams' description of Hopton-on-Sea made me think of Pillar Point Harbor, the harbor on the San Mateo County coast that I visited all the time as a child. Because of the way the southern breakwater of the outer harbor at Pillar Point has effectively cut off the southward flow of sediments since it was installed about fifty years ago, there is now a massive buildup of sand within the harbor, while just south of the breakwater, Surfer's Beach has been disappearing rapidly due to massive erosion. Like Hopton-on-Sea, Pillar Point is a reminder that both human engineering and society's interests are more often than not anathema to the health of our oceans and coastal environs.

Also, the description of boulders being used to block wave energy made me think of the shoreline and near-shore restoration work my colleagues and I do at the Boyer Lab, and how actions taken to fixed localized problems could have consequences "downstream." I appreciated that Aldersey-Williams points out that using boulders to essentially stop cliff erosion might mean that other parts of the coast might end up eroding faster because it will have stopped receiving the input of sediment it is accustomed to getting from the eroding cliffs.

Aldersey-Williams ends his book back at the spot where he began, at the place near his home where he sat for a day to observe a full tidal cycle. By using the example of coastal erosion, which simultaneously can ruin people's homes while also providing opportunities for scientific research, Aldersey-Williams makes his final point: that the tide is an irresistible force that can both create and destroy in the same action.

I finished The Sea Around Us last week so this week all I had left to read was the afterword. The afterword was written in 1989 by marine biologist Jeffrey Levinton, nearly forty years after the original printing of The Sea Around Us. In this section of the book, Levinton presents a quick summary of some of the developments in marine science since the last edition of The Sea Around Us.

There are many interesting discoveries that Levinton discusses, but in particular I enjoyed reading about Vestimentiferans, the huge tube worms which live close to deep ocean hot vents and can grow to over five feet long. Also, I was fascinated to read that genetic analysis was used to prove that eels living in the Sargasso Sea were actually hybrids born from the matings of American and European eels that encountered each other during their migratory journeys.

Ultimately however, the most important part of Levinton's afterword for me was his closing statement on how we must do more to protect our oceans. It is truly unfortunate that some of the main threats the ocean faced in 1989, at least according to Levinton, are exactly the same as the problems the ocean faces today: input of sewage and other forms of nutrient pollution, harmful toxin, oil spills, and plastic ocean. Levinton's closing remarks highlight the fact that we humans have always known what we must do to protect and preserve our environment for the future, and that it's simply a question of finally putting in the effort needed to get it done.

Looking back over these last ten weeks, I have to say I had a great time reading these two books. While it was often hard to find the time to read, I don't think I would have finished two such dense books in the space of a few months had I not been tasked to do so for this Marine Resources class. I have fallen out of the habit of reading over the last few years and I appreciate that blogging about these two books has helped to get me back into the habit.

Also, I enjoyed reading both books concurrently because it was nice to switch between two different worlds and two different tones on a regular basis: While Aldersey-Williams was writing in the present, bringing in mythology, history, and firsthand accounts to bear as he talked about the tides, Rachel Carson was writing in the 1950s, and she wasn't just writing about the tides but about the oceans as a general subject of interest. Aldersey-Williams' tone was more conversational and informal, while Carson employed a style of writing that, while accessible, was much more formal and stylistic compared to Aldersey-Williams'.

Overall I had a great time with these books and I'm already itching to explore some of the books listed in the "Further Reading" section of The Sea Around Us, as well as some in The Tide's bibliography! Many thanks to Dr. Ellen Hines for a great class. I hope all my blog visitors enjoyed reading about these two books!

References:

• Aldersey-Williams, H. (2016). The tide: The science and stories behind the greatest force on Earth. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
• Carson, R. L. (1951). The sea around us (1989 ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc.