REWILDING THE SEA: How to Save Our Oceans

Charles Clover

Witness Books/Penguin, 2023, 288 pages

Paperback £12.99 | ISBN: 9781529144055  

BLUE MACHINE – How the Ocean Shapes Our World

Helen Czerski

Penguin, 2023, 464 pages,

Paperback £10.99 | ISBN: 9781804991961  

Review by Janet Mackinnon 

I’ll begin this 2-book review by admitting it may reflect cognitive bias confirmation. My long-held view is that some of the best writing on nature and the environment comes from non-scientists; and I therefore have a certain preference for veteran journalist Charles Clover’s Rewilding the Seas (despite generally avoiding books on rewilding due to a perceived over-marketing of the ‘genre’). However, Helen Czerski’s Blue Machine is undoubtedly a masterly enterprise in creative science communication from a polymath scientist and media presenter. Both volumes share pragmatic and guarded optimism about what the late David Bellamy described as ‘the life-giving sea’ in his own 1975 book of that name. I mention this because writing and documentaries on ocean science and conservation have been a feature – albeit one whose prominence ebbs and flows – of popular environmental culture since the 1970s. Indeed, those famous campaigns to ‘save the whales’ are synonymous with the new wave of environmentalism that launched groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, arguably transforming the more traditional conservation movement in their wake. 

Like supporters of terrestrial rewilding, Charles Clover also offers a critical perspective on more conventional managerialist approaches to conservation. Although this is carefully nuanced as he is also a strong advocate of enforceable regulation, notably in the form of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and species protection. Following the success of a 2009 film version of his earlier book about over-fishing, The End of the Line, Clover co-founded the Blue Marine Foundation (BLUE) with Chris Gorrell Barnes and George Duffield who had collaborated on the documentary. Rewilding the Sea belongs within this broader portfolio of work that flowed from Clover’s former career as journalist and writer on countryside and environmental issues for publications from, it is fair to say, towards the right of the political spectrum such as the Telegraph and Times, plus Country Life and The Field. As a keen angler, the author comes from what might be termed the ‘hunting, shooting and fishing’ branch of rewilding. I’m on neutral ground here, but there is a historical discourse among ECOS contributors against and in favour of this. Consequently, it is no surprise that early support for the present volume came from establishment rewilder Isabella Tree. Like Tree and husband Charlie Burrell of the Knepp Estate, Charles Clover and BLUE colleagues have sought to successfully combine public and private funding for conservation. Early partnership with the UK government on the establishment of the Chagos MPA was significantly enabled with philanthropic backing from Swiss billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli.  

Rewilding the Sea contains an insightful account of the Chagos Archipelago (also known as the British Indian Ocean Territory) initiative which illustrates the potential for conflict between strategic nature protection and human rights even in ‘uninhabited’ maritime areas. BLUE’s involvement in the region began with the UK government’s 2009 consultation on the creation of the largest marine reserve in the world. Clover observes his new organisation was better placed to campaign on this proposal than ‘the lumbering giants of conservation’ (established international NGOs). However, as he observes ‘the enterprise was not without controversy’ because ‘the entire human population of the Chagos had been evicted from the territory by 1973, never to be allowed back.’ This followed a military agreement with the United States on the use of Diego Garcia, the largest island in the archipelago. A legal dispute between the UK, dispossessed Chagossians and the government of Mauritius is ongoing. Nevertheless, Clover concludes that: ‘Chagos was a big conservation prize’: 

Declaring a (fishing) ‘no-take’ reserve in the 640,000sq kms of Chagos waters would double the global no-take area – then under 1 per cent of the whole – and protect 1.5 per cent of the world’s near-surface coral reefs. At the time, the UK and US governments were not going to budge on their decision on the occupation of the islands or allow the Chagossians to re-settle any time soon, so conservationists decided to go with the art of the possible. 

Despite the sovereignty dispute (a feature of the UK Overseas Territories and those of other nations), the Chagos MPA remains widely regarded as an international conservation success story. BLUE collaborated with the Chagos Conservation Trust to campaign for the no-take reserve, and the latter has since led a ‘rewilding project’ called ‘Healthy Islands, Healthy Reefs’. This reflects the widely recognised need to integrate terrestrial and marine ecosystems restoration programmes – Czerski’s Blue Machine also highlights linkages between land and sea – and BLUE’s current ‘Solent Seascape’ project (supported by the newly renamed Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme) is another example of the integrated approach. Returning to Rewilding the Sea, Clover unsurprisingly applauds creation of the UK Government’s Blue Belt Programme and Great British Oceans (now called Great Blue Ocean) which he describes as ‘one of the greatest conservation coalitions on earth,’ bringing together NGOs, research groups, UKOT local governments and communities, as well as UK government departments. Marine environmental governance was also singled out as a successful example of post-Brexit policy at the UCL/ECOS conference earlier this year. However, long-time ECOS contributor Dr Mike Pienkowski of the UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum is guarded about the financial sustainability of the Blue Belt Programme, and pointed to increasing competition between marine and terrestrial conservation funding for the UKOTs (host to many unique endemic species) in a 2022 article. 

Notwithstanding my enthusiasm for Rewilding the Seas, in many ways a gripping salty yarn ideal for readers unable to sail across the oceans to distant places – or even venture to the coast – during the holiday season, I do have some reservations about the book. Clover has perhaps boarded the rewilding ship (or marketing platform) without giving sufficient deep thought to what ocean rewilding might actually mean during the Anthropocene (of which he gives no mention).  Rewilding enthusiasts may well share in the spirit of Clover’s ‘journey from despair to hope about the state of our common oceans’ as he rejects the scientific fixation with ‘monitoring decline’ in favour of ‘letting natural processes restore the sea, any bit of sea…”; but they should keep in mind the oceans represent a global maelstrom of challenging conservation during the ‘blue acceleration’ in competition for natural resources. Those seeking an alternative environmental justice view might consult an open access article from 2020 entitled: Degrowth and the Blue Belt: Rethinking marine conservation in the British Overseas Territories or a 2023 British Ecological Society blog on marine rewilding  

‘The Blue Machine and Us’ 

Dr Helen Czerski is a ‘physicist with a love of the natural world’ and impressive broadcasting credentials, which include co-presenter of BBC Radio’s new flagship environmental programme Rare Earth with the veteran Tom Heap. The first episode of the series asked: ‘Should we just leave nature alone?’ which considers some of the discourses around rewilding. However, Blue Machine – as far as I can recollect – does not feature the ‘R’ word at all. This short review will focus on the final section of the book entitled ‘The Blue Machine and Us’ which opens with a quote from US astronaut Lacey Veach: “You can’t protect what you don’t understand. And you won’t if you don’t care.” Better understanding of ‘how the ocean shapes our world’ – Blue Machine’s subtitle – is Czerski’s over-arching mission, and a review which does full justice to this can be found on The Inquisitive Biologist website (definitely worth a look for anyone with a serious interest in recent publications on life sciences and natural history). Like Rewilding the Sea, Blue Machine was published last year to wide acclaim, which included a listing as Financial Times Book of the Year. Indeed, Czerski intentionally and very successfully appeals to a broad readership and the growing audience who consume books in various other media and online formats (Talks at Google, for instance). Not surprisingly therefore, Blue Machine is shaped by something of a conservation – and ocean – optimism narrative on which I shall reflect later. 

The last chapter, ‘Future,’ begins with these statements:  

Our global ocean is a fabulous system, and contains so much to appreciate and rejoice in, and I think we need to hold on to all of that while we address the hard questions about what happens next…The primary reason for setting out the damage we have inflicted on the blue machine is not to shock. It’s to lift us out of helpfulness. As we acquire knowledge, we also acquire the grounds for optimism. 

Czerski then goes on to discuss ‘the most fundamental problem:’ ‘More than 90 per cent of all the additional energy accumulating on Earth because of human changes to the climate system has ended up in the ocean as heat.’ One consequence of a warmer ocean is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, contributing to more terrestrial and marine heating. A further effect of the latter is ocean acidification. Czerski also discusses the challenges of warming in polar regions – I recommend The Ferocious Summer  on this subject – whist acknowledging ‘the full consequences aren’t clear yet.’ She then describes ‘(some of) the other problems’ facing the oceans, including over-fishing and pollution. To tackle these and other challenges, Czerski recommends ‘the most powerful tools’ of ‘perspective, knowledge and humility,’ highlighting the importance of ‘Values’ in scientific discourse and the need to make these ‘explicit.’ Finally, she reiterates a worldview – ‘science and culture are far more intertwined than most scientists would like to admit’ – that I strongly concur with:  

We built a culture based on ignoring the realities of living on a finite planet, a culture based on building and expanding and consuming and creating without having to think too much about the planetary life-support system that was keeping us alive. At the same time, we lost much of our relationship with the natural world, and deprived ourselves of the delight and wonder of being part of something far bigger… 

This appeal to what might be described as spiritual values brings to mind the work of Oxford zoologist and marine biologist Sir Alister Hardy – I’m an occasional contributor to The Alister Hardy Trust’s journal De Numine – who latterly turned his attention to the study of religions. The ocean’s numinosity, transcendence and sublimity are qualities explored by artists, writers and theologians, including recently the Anglican priest Edmund Newell in The Sacramental Sea. Subtitled ‘A spiritual voyage through Christian history,’ this book does not however reflect Helen Czerski’s spiritual worldview as she is a patron of Humanists UK 

At the beginning of this review, notwithstanding the genuine merits of Blue Machine, I expressed a preference for Rewilding the Sea, and to this I shall return by way of conclusion. Despite some reservations, the ability of ‘Team Charles Clover’ to transform what started out as a journalistic and media enterprise in to a strategic and practical conservation endeavour is to be strongly applauded. A June 2024 feature on the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme website is entitled ‘Uniting conservation and restoration for large-scale ocean recovery’ This draws some of its inspiration from the Blue Marine Foundation’s work, including the Solent Seascape project but starts by recognising that: 

Marine restoration is hard. Marine restoration at the scale that we now need to practice it to address our damaged planetary health is even harder. Not impossible – and most certainly urgently needed – but still hard.  

The article, which previews a forthcoming issue of the Nature Journal Ocean Sustainability, also identifies marine spatial planning ‘anchored to ecosystem-based management’ as a key pathway to ‘ocean regeneration.’ As someone with a background in terrestrial spatial planning and regeneration, albeit on a rather more modest scale, I can relate strongly to the informed nuanced optimism of this integrated and pragmatic approach. Based on my limited experience of marine restoration, current good practice can be found in examples as far apart as Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea and off the coast of North Wales.