The High Seas: Ambition, Power and Greed on the Unclaimed Ocean (Hardback) - Olive Heffernan

The race to control, protect and profit from Earth's new blue frontier

'Powerful reportage...awash with wonderful obscurities' The Sunday Times 'A vital, fascinating, deeply researched exploration of Earth's last wilderness... Shocking and starkly illuminating - a must-read.' Gaia Vince The ocean covers seventy per cent of the surface of our planet, and two thirds of this lie beyond national borders. Owned by all nations and no nation simultaneously, these waters are home to some of the richest and most biodiverse environments on the planet. But they are also home to exploitation on a scale that few of us can imagine. Here, industry and economic progress rule and lax enforcement and apathy are the status quo. Out of sight and often out of mind, a battle rages to control, profit from, protect, or obliterate the world's largest, wildest commons. Heffernan sets sail on a journey to uncover the truth behind deeply exploitative fishing practices, investigate the potentially devastating impact of deep-sea mining, and hold to task the Silicon-valley interventionists whose solutions to climate change are often wildly optimistic, radically irresponsible or both. The result is a forceful and deeply researched manifesto calling for the protection and preservation of this final frontier - the last vestiges of wilderness on Earth.

About the Author

Olive Heffernan is an award-winning science journalist. Her work has been published in Nature, WIRED, National Geographic, Guardian, New Scientist and BBC Wildlife, among other outlets. Now freelance, Olive spent a number of years with Nature covering climate change, including as first chief editor of the research journal Nature Climate Change. In 2019, she joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University as an adjunct lecturer, and in 2020 received a Giles St Aubyn Award for non-fiction from the Royal Society of Literature. Olive is currently funded by the Pulitzer Centre to report on ocean conservation in Europe. She lives by the sea in Ireland with her husband and children and spends her spare time cold-water swimming, paddle-boarding, kayaking, and rock-pooling.