Deep Blue Home: An Intimate Ecology of Our Wild Ocean

Deep Blue Home: An Intimate Ecology of Our Wild Ocean by Whitty, Julia. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780618119813.

At the center of Deep Blue Homeâ a penetrating exploration of the ocean as single vast current and of the creatures dependent on itâ is Whittyâ s description of the three-dimensional ocean river, far more powerful than the Nile or the Amazon, encircling the globe. Itâ s a watery force connected to the earthâ s climate control and so to the eventual fate of the human race. Whittyâ s thirty-year career as a documentary filmmaker and diver has given her sustained access to the scientists dedicated to the study of an astonishing range of ocean life, from the physiology of â extremophileâ life forms to the strategies of nesting seabirds to the ecology of â whale fallsâ (what happens upon the death of a behemoth). No stranger to extreme adventure, Whitty travels the oceanside and underwater world from the Sea of Cortez to Newfoundland to Antarctica. In the Galapagos, in one of the bookâ s most haunting encounters, she realizes: â I am about to learn the answer to my long-standing question about what would happen to a person in the water if a whale sounded directly alongsideâ would she, like a person afloat beside a sinking ship, be dragged under too?â  This book provides extraordinary armchair entree to gripping adventure, cutting-edge science, and an intimate understanding of our deep blue home.