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This book won the Wainwright Conservation Prize 2024.
I wasn’t on the panel that made the decision. As informative as this is, I would have given the prize to Sophie Yeo’s Nature’s Ghosts: The world we lost and how to bring it backNature’s Ghosts: The world we lost and how to bring it back, which is actually the only other book in the shortlist I have read, though I do plan to read some of the others.

In taking in a book about the oceans of our planet there needs to be plenty of science and statistics, and this is a very fact driven book. It is divided into three parts, the last of which only occupies a few pages. In that, the third part, Czerski says she has intentionally avoided mentioning the damage done by humans to the ocean and what the future holds. The first two parts, 80 per cent of the text, is to do with the nature of the ocean. I had hoped to read more about conservation. I enjoy figures, facts and statistics, each following closely after the previous, much less.

More human anecdotes require good writing to convince and enthral. Here, those are outweighed by the science, but when they are present, they stand out as a highlight. An example is how the ship of the explorer Nansen was trapped in what he termed ‘dead water� in 1893, his boat would not move. Czerski provides the reason with a well-written passage that grips the attention. Unfortunately there are too few such examples.