Deep Water (2024)
The World in the Ocean
James Bradley
rating good
type nonfiction/journalism audiobook
concepts environment humans-animals-nature science/marine-biology
2025/06/16 Overall, this was interesting and well-written, spanning a huge range of topics and time-spans with a compelling mix of personal and scientific storytelling. However, I did have trouble staying focused— not sure if it’s because I’ve read a decent amount about many of the topics Bradley covers (whales & dolphins, fish behavior and sensory systems, coral bleaching and research, plastic pollution, the shipping and seafood industries, climate change in general?), but there were only rarely truly captivating or exciting sections (most of which I noted above). Still, I’ll keep this one bookmarked as a solid overview of ocean-related environmental and social issues. Also: Australian narrator, highly enjoyable!
- Sense of oneness, awe, wonder that arise from things like skydiving, surfing, psychedelics, meditation (my favorite things) → neurological basis potentially in synchronization of circuits governing our “inner” and “outer” worlds — also, Earthrise, water in general
- “Time, water, the ocean. The three are inextricably connected.”
- How climate patterns affected colonization…
- Ocean currents greatly facilitated the “Columbian Exchange” and the triangular slave trade… another one of those environmental, sorta arbitrary, non-generic factors underlying modern social disparities.
- Racial underpinnings of swimming, in two waves:
- Initially, the ability to swim itself was seen as suspicious by Europeans; a sign of savagery, an animal nature, “otherness” of people in the “New World”
- Even once it became more accepted, Europeans lauded breaststroke over the much more efficient “side stroke” varieties that the Pacific Islanders used, until some guy on New Zealand “invented” freestyle based on one of their examples
- The soundscape of the seas
- Echolocation in toothed whales may affect the animals’ sense of self, since each individual can “hear” the signals of other animals (sometimes even a distance away) in addition to their own
- The Cocoa (Keelings) Islands
- Some islands in the middle of the Pacific (between Australia and Sri Lanka?) that were basically under the dictatorship of a Scottish family for >150 years, only officially joining Australia in the 1970s— as Wikipedia puts it, the islands were a “personal fiefdom”
- The population wasn’t even “indigenous,” but rather comprised of the actual harem and indentured laborers brought over by the family