Olive Heffernan, The High Seas: Ambition, Power and Greed on the Unclaimed Ocean

This is not a book for pessimists.The High Seas is a volume of recent history and focuses on the often-unnoticed activities on, in, and beneath waters which are not only out of sight, but often out of mind.In the first part of the book, author Olive Heffernan moves quickly over the development of international rights and claims over the seas from the establishment of the three-mile limit, through the extension to twelve miles, the subsequent 200-mile zones of economic control, and ultimately to the extended continental shelf claims.The introduction to the attempts to nationalize the seas is a short but valuable preamble to the core of the author's concern.Foremost in her analysis of recent and current activities is the lack of balance between the perceived rights to high seas resources and the frequent abdication of any responsibilities in these same seas.This is a depressing recounting of the tragedy of the commons wherein the resource either belongs to everyone or to no one, resulting in a failure to manage it for the good of all.Heffernan is not an academic but an established and respected science journalist.The book is well researched and written, and benefits from the journalist's ability and skill in allowing those working on the unclaimed oceans to tell their several stories.Some of the topics in this omnibus of marine abuse will be familiar ones for anyone following the current direction of environmental history: the great gyres of plastic garbage, sea-bed nodule mining, predatory fishing fleets, and the creation of marine dead zones.While Heffernan covers these expected areas, the value in the publication lies in the less-familiar types of destruction and overuse.She covers, for example, the discovery and potential exploitation of fishery of the "twilight zone," an area between the maximum depth for photosynthesis at about 100 meters and the beginning of almost absolute darkness at 1000 meters, an area which may contain billions of tons of fish.The author explores the value of this resource but stresses the danger of exploitation without an understanding of the ecological role of these creatures.In addition, this is a completely unregulated area and a potential source of conflict between states seeking to exploit the space.Another seldom-cited value of the high seas is the genes and drugs found, and yet to be found, in marine flora and fauna.While some attention has been paid to the potential of areas such as the Amazon rain forest, the un-owned oceans also have great potential as the source of additional genetic resources.Here, too, owing to the lack of agreement and control, there is inequality of

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.