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Great Waters: An Atlantic Passage
Emily Clinch
 Deborah
Cramer is a scientist and writer from Gloucester, Massachusetts. Her
book, Great Waters, explores the natural history of the Atlantic
Ocean, it’s impact on our environment, and people’s impact
on it. The book has received favorable reviews from the Boston
Globe, Washington Post Book World, the New York
Times Book Review, Bill McKibben, Al Gore and more. Cramer herself
has been compared to Rachel Carson on more than one occasion. I recently
had the opportunity to ask Cramer about her book via email.
You wrote Great Waters after taking an ocean voyage through the
Atlantic. Did you set out with the intention of writing a book?
My original intention was to write a natural history of the Atlantic.
There are plenty of books, excellent books, about scientists who study
the sea and the work they do. I wanted to write a book where the ocean
itself was the central character.
In the beginning, researching Great Waters proved difficult.
There was so much to learn, so many subjects to consider. Initially,
the reams of material and research papers felt like the sea, vast
and boundless. Sailing from Woods Hole to Barbados as a visiting scholar
on a research vessel offered a perspective, and a way to organize
the material. The voyage allowed me to see Atlantic’s distinct
neighborhoods, the cold and stormy Gulf of Maine, once home to some
of the world’s most prolific fisheries, and the cobalt blue
of the Gulf Stream, a fast-flowing current carrying heat to warm Europe,
whose climate would otherwise be like that of Labrador.
We sailed through the Sargasso, the eye of the ocean. There, one thousand
miles offshore, seemingly out beyond the reach of man, we found tiny,
microscopic, pieces of plastic. Finding so much plastic so far away
raised a key question: does the sea matter and does what we do to
its waters matter? Addressing this question is one of the central
themes of Great Waters.
Who would get the most out of reading your book?
In a few years, 50% of us will be living within 50 miles of the coast,
and most of the rest of us live near creeks, streams, and rivers draining
into the sea. Great Waters is for everyone, everyone who
loves the sea, lives near the sea, or lives near water flowing into
the sea.
Great Waters is for everyone because, as I came to realize
researching the book, no matter where we live, the sea is literally
life-giving, and that our well-being depends on its waters. Many people
believe, for example, that the oxygen we breathe comes from trees.
In fact, almost 50% of the photosynthesis taking place on earth is
carried out in the ocean, by tiny, floating plants invisible to the
naked eye.
Here in the United States, we tend to take our benign climate for
granted, but the ebb and flow of Atlantic currents and the warming
and cooling of Atlantic surface waters have brought nourishing rains
and devastating drought to Saharan Africa, and contributed to the
rise and fall of ancient civilizations in the Middle East. A drought,
caused by a change in the waters of the Atlantic, ended one of the
earliest civilizations in the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley.
What do you believe is the most important challenge to the life
of the ocean?
Today, more than the push and pull of tides, more than the sweep of
currents, more than the fiercest northeast storms, our species has
become the primary architect of Atlantic’s shores and coastal
waters. From our home on dry land, we have restructured marine food
webs, toppled the dominant predators, altered the temperature and
salinity of seawater, and even its chemical composition.
We are altering the pace of life in the sea in so many ways, it’s
hard to say one way is more important than another: global warming
and unsustainable fishing practices threaten the continued health
of coral reefs; nitrogen from farm fields and livestock pastures washing
down rivers into the sea is creating dead zones and fish kills in
our estuaries.
You take a very long view of the life cycle of the ocean —
where, today, can you see parallels to the young Atlantic?
As oceans go, today’s Atlantic is middle-aged. The sea was born
about 140 million years ago, as fiery volcanoes tore an ancient continent
apart. A modern analog would be in East Africa, where earth’s
youngest, newest ocean is being born. Rips in the earth run from the
Zambeze River in Mozambique, up through the desert of Afar in Ethiopia
and into the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. In between them lie the
snowcapped peaks of Mt. Kilimanjaro, the fossil beds of Olduvai Gorge,
and a string of sparkling lakes that may ultimately join to form a
new sea. Eventually, Ethiopia may be separated from the rest of Africa
by an emerging ocean; the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden may eventually
be as wide as the Atlantic is today.
Heat rising from deep in the earth is stretching the land here, pulling
it apart, and exposing the bones and tools, which record the advent
of man. The birth of a new ocean in Africa sheds light on both the
evolution of the Atlantic and the evolution of man.
Your book’s epigraph and title come from Psalms; later you quote
Genesis. How important do you think it is to understand views of the
ocean throughout history?
I named the book Great Waters from the line in the Book of
Psalms because it suggests an intuitive understanding of the sea held
by ancient peoples. Today, science can elegantly and explicitly articulate
that understanding, which reveals the myriad ways in which the sea
is a well-spring of life.
It’s important to examine our long-standing, deeply rooted values
and assumptions. The quote from Genesis describes the Biblical directive
for man to have dominion over the beasts of the field and the fishes
of the sea. We have fulfilled this ancient urge, but we may not have
anticipated the consequences.  What
sort of scientific training do you have, and when did you first
become interested in your field?
I have always loved the sea. Some of my fondest childhood memories
are of summer days spent on Cape Cod, idling away hour after hour
in an inner tube, riding the swells. I first began writing about
the sea when we moved to the edge of a salt marsh.
While I was in graduate school at MIT I worked in the Ocean Engineering
Department, where I received hands-on training in ocean science
and policy from people who understood that subtle place where good
policy and good science intersect.
Why the Atlantic?
Initially, it did seem daunting to write about a whole ocean, but
as oceans go, the Atlantic is the most well-studied and researched.
There is more information about the Atlantic, about its early history
and the history of oceans that preceded it, about the waters that
flow into it, and about how it works today. Also, and just as important,
I live by the Atlantic, and have the opportunity to watch it, tide
after tide, season after season.
Who are your environmental heroes?
Rachel Carson, for one. She was a meticulous researcher and scientist
who could synthesize volumes of material across multiple disciplines
and then, with keen attention to the nuance of language, turn the
information into books we could all understand.
I also have a few heroes not as well known — the shellfish
warden in my town, who little by little, year by year, is patiently
rebuilding the local alewife run, and an unsung scientist at the
Northeast Fisheries Science Center, who each year, painstakingly
figures out what it would take to rebuild New England’s sadly
depleted fisheries. I am hoping that someday the political tide
will turn and that policy makers will follow his recommendations.
You signed onto a research voyage from Massachusetts to Barbados.
What can everyday people do to get a better sense of the ocean?
People who want to know what it’s like to sail through a wide
swath of sea but who can’t go themselves, can read Great
Waters. They can sit out on the bowsprit of the boat with me,
watching tiny marine organisms lighting up the dark night, or together
we can follow the migration paths of right whales. Readers of Great
Waters can feel the heat of the Gulf Stream, the listlessness
of the Sargasso, and the push of the trade winds, and can learn
why it all matters.
People can spend a little time near the sea, and get to know it.
Pennsylvanians can follow the Susquehanna down into Chesapeake Bay,
or visit Delaware Bay. They can walk through a salt marsh, or stroll
along a winter beach looking for flotsam and jetsam washed by the
tide. Walking a beach in Bermuda a few months ago, I found a sea
bean, a large, and hardy seed from a South American tree that had
floated down a river to the sea, and then rode two ocean currents
before landing on the sands of Bermuda.
Finally, what can an individual do to help protect the Atlantic?
People who restore and protect watersheds where they live are helping
to protect marine waters, because almost all rivers flow to the
sea. Farmers tending their fields near the upper Mississippi and
Ohio Rivers are also tending to the lives of shrimp in the Gulf
of Mexico, for what washes off their fields, runs to the sea.
There are so many ways people can help. Parents can take their children
canoeing and kayaking on creeks and rivers, and teach them to love
and care about water. In the spring, they can go to creeks where
the shad are running, and help count returning fish.
People can help restore water quality to local streams and rivers,
by repairing stream banks and planting trees to filter nutrients
and hold sediment. They can write letters to their congressmen supporting
specific legislation to restore watersheds. They can identify specific
watershed associations and projects in their neighborhoods by contacting
the Pennsylvania Organization for Watersheds and Rivers.
Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers supply 50% of
the freshwater entering Chesapeake Bay. Replanting native trees
— ash, maple, and oak — along the edges of Pennsylvania
streams will clean Pennsylvania waters and improve water quality
in Chesapeake Bay, making it possible for underwater grasses and
blue crabs to flourish in the bay once again. Already, people in
Pennsylvania have restored 600 miles of riparian buffer along the
state’s waterways, proving that the goal of 6,000 to 12,000
miles is reachable. The Pennsylvania office of the Chesapeake Bay
Foundation has detailed information about the links between the
health of Pennsylvania watersheds and the health of Chesapeake Bay.
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