In this book, Deborah Cramer sought to take the view we are all familiar with, that of our own bay or cove stretching out horizontally to a not-too-distant horizon, and to expand our viewpoints both higher and deeper enough to carry that view out across and down into the whole Atlantic. This ocean, with the history of the old world on one shore and the engine of the new on the other, is perhaps second only to the Mediterranean in concentrated human activity, and, as revealed in the book, has suffered for this intimacy.

From the deck of the sailing research schooner CORWITH CRAMER (which is incidentally currently undergoing a major refit in Rockland), the author reduces the vastness of the Atlantic to its component parts, made visible either through observation, or with research equipment reaching into the depths, or by expanding the scope of her view by moving us along with the flow of the water, following in the wake of the migrating tuna to Italy or Africa, and thus making us aware of the intimate connections of our waters to distant lands. The text is clearly organized, covering topics such as the chemistry and meteorology of the Atlantic basin, the makeup of animal communities, the underlying geology and tectonics of the benthos, and finally the social history and human impacts our culture has laid on the whole.

Within this breakdown of seemingly separate topics, she weaves into all sections detailed threads such as the feeding behavior of sperm whales on giant squid, or the surprising pesticide loads of some of the deepest dwellers, or the driving animal vitality brought by the warmth of the Gulf Stream. These details tie her tapestry together, and leave the reader with the final point, that the Atlantic is a complex machine of many interacting parts, none of which are truly discrete, and that the running of this wonderful machine is threatened not by a single insult that we are delivering (which we could perhaps easily address), but rather by the torture of a thousand cuts. An oil spill here, a drag or two there, tuna taken by hundreds of fishermen unaware of each others’ harvests, farm fertilizer from the Great Plains feeding a deoxygenated body of water reaching all the way around Florida, and the slow but gradual warming of the atmosphere and waters themselves — all contribute to the man-caused change of these waters. While this book is alarming in its presentation of the stresses we are bringing to bear on the Atlantic, it does so in a way that never loses sight of the life-sustaining magnificence of the waters themselves. The text brings passion and excitement to the spawning of capelin, reverence to geologic processes, and even drama to the plankton.

In the end, the author paints an interwoven and complete biography of the Atlantic itself, but she is somewhat crude in her representation of the human role in the drama. As we work towards renewing our stewardship and rebuilding our waters, we are practically unable to turn them completely back into a wild pre-Columbian state. Instead, we must recognize our effects, apply new thinking to mitigate or eliminate them, and continue living with and from the richness of the waters. Those who work on the waters are certainly complicit in creating the fisheries crises of today, but they and their descendants will also be the ones to pilot the way out. Fishermen and fisheries come in many shapes and colors, and the creation of a vibrant, working ecosystem will mean appreciating the differences, integrating their knowledge, and developing discerning and innovative solutions.

The author is correct and poetic in representing the wondrous depth of the Atlantic, and she is accurate in blaming man for altering the system. But she falls short in suggesting a real solution, and misses the mark in regarding the water as a body foreign to humans. We must realize it is not man in general who caused the insults to the ecosystem, but you and I and our neighbors, and the solutions must come from the same source. Folks who live or work in and around the water will appreciate the depth of Deborah Cramer’s book, and the vibrant detail and evocative interwoven patterns of her prose. Her book goes a long way towards building an understanding of and reverence for the powerful and living Atlantic. The next step will be to translate that appreciation into a solution.