United States
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The ocean covers seventy per cent of the surface of our planet, and two-thirds of this lies 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 atrocities beyond most of our imaginations.
Here, out of sight and often out of mind, industry and economic progress rule and lax enforcement and apathy are the status quo, underscored by a battle 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 silicone-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.
Olive Heffernan is a science journalist with over 15 years of experience as a reporter and an editor. Her writing on ocean science and climate change has been published in Nature, WIRED, National Geographic, New Scientist and BBC Wildlife, among many others. A marine biologist by training, she spent the early part of her career conserving Atlantic fish stocks before leaving academia to pursue a career in journalism. She was an editor with Nature, the founding chief editor of Nature Climate Change and chief editor of The Marine Scientist magazine. She received the Bob Barton Memorial Award for Marine Science/Technology writing, a fellowship at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a fellowship at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. 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. Heffernan has spoken at conferences and world-class research centres across Europe, the US and Asia, and continues to write and report on the high seas. 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.
"A vital, fascinating, deeply researched exploration of Earth's last wilderness, owned by us all and by no one. This is powerful and urgent reportage that rips the veil of romanticism to reveal a vast world of criminal and dangerous enterprise accelerating beyond our shores, threatening us all. Shocking and starkly illuminating – a must-read."
– Gaia Vince
"Profoundly informed, passionately written, thrillingly adventurous [...] a masterful study in natural history"
– Philip Ball
"An illuminating portrait of a world we rarely see and barely understand"
– Robert Kunzig
"The essential guide to the high seas, by someone who has done more than almost anyone on earth in the last few years to understand the problems we face, and the solutions available."
– Will McCallum, director of Greenpeace UK
"On the surface the seas roll on as always. But below, much is changing. And much more is at stake as humans seek plunder and profit beyond the reach of nations. In The High Seas, Olive Heffernan ably takes us into the history, the present, and the future of this largest and most mysterious realm of the planet."
– Carl Safina
"Heffernan's reporting reveals our human imprint everywhere in the oceans, from the surface to the seafloor, by deciphering the geopolitics, economics, environmental sciences, and morality behind our use of the high seas"
– Helen Rozwadowski, author of Vast Expanses
"The best introduction I have ever read to the biological, technical, and institutional issues connected with the High Seas and the exploitation of its resources. A gem of a book!"
– Daniel Pauly
