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This World Ocean Day, Blue Marine Foundation is celebrating the publication through Ebury imprint Witness Books of Blue Marine Foundation co-founder and executive director, Charles Clover’s hotly anticipated book, Rewilding the Sea: How to Save Our Oceans.
A follow-up to his 2004 The End of the Line, which won multiple awards and was adapted into an acclaimed documentary, Rewilding the Sea explores how to let nature itself repair the damage we’ve done to our oceans.
Overfishing is both one of the most devastating environmental problems on Earth and a major contributor to climate change. Yet the appalling destruction it causes to marine creatures and habitats is solvable, and there is hope to be found in nature-based solutions. Rewilding the Sea shows what happens when you let nature repair the damage: whether overfishing of bluefin tuna across the Atlantic or the destruction of coral gardens by dredgers in Lyme Bay.
Furthermore, with the latest science showing that trawling and dredging damage vast areas of our continental shelves and stop them soaking up carbon, marine carbon capture is becoming a vital ingredient in the wider solution to reversing climate catastrophe. In this urgent yet hopeful work, Charles Clover shows that we can store carbon and have more fish by stepping aside more often and trusting nature.
To mark the book’s publication, Charles said, “I’m delighted to be publishing stories about tendrils of hope out there in the ocean, today. The destruction of life in our oceans is the world’s largest solvable problem. We just need to rewild the sea”
Listen to Charles in conversation with UN Patron of the Oceans, Lewis Pugh, about the publication of Rewilding the Sea:
Isabella Tree, author of Wilding, says, “This book is desperately needed. Interest in terrestrial rewilding is rocketing and now it is time for the sea. The material Charles Clover will be covering is rich, urgent and fascinating.”
George Monbiot says, “What if our seas became productive again with giant sturgeon, halibut and skate? What if we let the seas soak up carbon from the atmosphere like the peat bogs instead of battering them with trawls and dredges? It’s closer than you think. In fact, as Charles Clover explains, rewilding the sea has already begun.”
Stephen Fry says, “I doubt any more important book will be published this year. Charles Clover tells (with spirit and style) an alarming and convincing story, yet it is one that offers hope and a way forward for our beleaguered oceans … and us.”
Drummond Moir, who acquired UK & Commonwealth Rights for Witness Books from Ivan Mulcahy at MMB Creative, said, “There is great optimism about the benefits that rewilding and other nature-based solutions can bring to land; Charles Clover is here to show us that the same thinking can be applied to save our oceans and help us solve the climate crisis. Indeed the very week we signed this up, a ground-breaking Nature paper revealed that fishing boats trawling the ocean floor release as much CO2 as the entire aviation industry. This awakening about the fate and significance of our oceans is only going to continue, and REWILDING THE SEAS will be the perfect book – urgent, yet hopeful – to drive the conversation forward and perhaps even change a few minds.”
Order the book, Rewilding the Sea: How to Save Our Oceans, here.
