Deep Water

February 27, 2024
The first chapter of Deep Water is named ‘The Word for World Is Water’, a reference to science fiction writer Ursula K Le Guin’s novella The Word for World Is Forest. Le Guin’s fiction was deeply attuned to the effects of capitalism on the environment, and this sets the tone for Deep Water, a book of foreboding joy arising from the impact of human life on Earth’s wondrous oceans. James Bradley (The Resurrectionist, Ghost Species) adopts a wide lens in Deep Water, from the inspiring moment humans see the blue planet for the first time on the Apollo 8 mission to the alarming reality that human interference led to the Antarctic ice shelf collapse. Readers learn in one chapter about how sea creatures communicate; another chapter presents the bleak effects of global shipping, including human trafficking and damage to ocean reefs. Deep Water also looks at the relationships First Nations people have with the seas, and Darwin’s early understanding of underwater landscapes. If the concepts are challenging to digest, Bradley’s prose is a delight to read. The book’s enduring message is about the effect of climate change and how we must reverse it. If readers need convincing, this book may do it. Those who liked Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything will enjoy Bradley’s dedication to research in tackling such a significant topic, as well as his use of first-person prose.

May 13, 2024
This expansive report from novelist Bradley (Ghost Species) studies ocean ecosystems as a means of exploring the interconnectedness of life on Earth. Emphasizing the fragility and complexity of ecological communities, Bradley notes that the industrial-scale slaughter of whales in the early 20th century counterintuitively resulted in an 80% drop in the krill population because whale “excrement provides vital nutrients for the phytoplankton upon which the krill depend.” Fish are more sophisticated than they’re given credit for, Bradley contends, citing research that found “rainbowfish learn to associate signals with food... twice as fast as dogs” and that sticklebacks ostracize group members who don’t take their turn in the vulnerable position at the front of the school. Such studies underscore what will be lost if humans don’t rein in climate change, Bradley argues, discussing how rising sea levels are endangering Australian sea turtles by submerging their traditional breeding grounds. Bradley weaves natural history, climate studies, and trivia into an elegant whole that drives home the dire threat global warming poses to the ocean, all delivered in plaintive prose (“The toxic legacies of human industry written into the bodies of ocean creatures are a reminder that the deep is not a place of forgetting, but an ark of memory”). It’s a galvanizing call to action. Agent: Camilla Bolton, Darley Anderson Literary.