Blowfish's Oceanopaedia

Blowfish's Oceanopaedia - Tom Hird ***

There's always the worry with books that could be classified as 'nature' that they don't really contain any science - they end up more like tourist guides of the natural world. This is fine if that's what you're looking for, but not doing the popular science job. Thankfully, Tom Hird's Blowfish's Oceanopedia is significantly more than a 'isn't nature wonderful?' book - though Hird's boundless enthusiasm for his topic does occasionally take us into 'gee whizz, wow' mode.

Unless you are already a marine biologist (which I certainly am not), you will indubitably learn a lot reading through Hird's collection of bite-sized oceanic and fishy facts. We begin with some information on the sea itself, the nature of waves and the like, then move on to the main course of the assorted denizens of the deep. I certainly had plenty of 'Oh, really? I didn't know that,' moments.

Unfortunately, though, there is a big drawback from the format that Hird has chosen. I read the first few pages thinking 'Okay, these are introductory bits - he'll start writing properly soon,' but it never happens. It should have been obvious from that Oceanopedia title - this isn't a continuous book, it's an encyclopaedia, though arranged by topic rather than alphabetically. Apart from a very few articles that lead on one to another, each, roughly page-long piece, is standalone. Now, encyclopaedias are all very well - and some people do claim to enjoy reading them end to end. But for most of us, a collection of short articles with no connection and no flow, makes for limited reading pleasure. (And because it's not alphabetic, you can't even look something up easily.)

As I've mentioned, there's plenty of content, though I did find Hird's regular remarks along the lines of 'this involves maths, which is too boring to talk about' irritating. While we're on the topic of irritation, I do slightly worry about a grown man who calls himself Blowfish - single word pseudonyms are silly in rock stars and downright bizarre in science writers. As far as I can tell, the biology stuff is all spot on. The physics might be a little less sound - Hird tells us that the Sun and the Moon exert a similar control of the tides. If he believes this I'll happily swap him the Sun's pull in pounds sterling for the Moon's pull, as the Moon's effect is about 2.1 times as strong.

So it's an absolutely fine book as a collection of short, fact-based articles - a tasty smörgåsbord if you enjoy that approach. But if you want any kind of narrative flow - something you would expect from Hird's exuberant storytelling in media appearances - you will be a little disappointed.

Hardback:

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

The Autobiography – Charles Darwin ****

I have to confess to putting off reading this book until the last moment, as I expected it to be a typical piece of Victorian sentimental unreadable stodge. I was wrong. Darwin’s little book (only 150 small pages with appendices) was originally written for his own children, and displays a very personal style of writing – though, as son Francis comments, his style was always more populist than was common then: “In writing he sometimes showed the same strong tendency to strong expressions that he did in conversation. Thus in the Origin, p440, there is a description of a larvel [sic] cirripede ‘with six pairs of beautifully constructed natatory legs, a pair of magnificent compound eyes and extremely complex antennae’. We used to laugh at him for this sentence, which we compared to an advertisement.” The main book is delightful because it demonstrates Darwin’s self-depreciating modesty, and the fascinating path he took from enthusiastic shooter of game, to amateur geologist (still his...

Govert Schilling - Five Way Interview

Govert Schilling is an acclaimed and prize-winning freelance astronomy writer and broadcaster in the Netherlands. His articles appear in Dutch newspapers and magazines, but he also has written for New Scientist, Science and BBC Sky at Night Magazine, and he is a contributing editor of Sky & Telescope. He wrote dozens of books (including a couple of children’s books) on a wide variety of astronomical topics, many of which have been translated into English, German, Italian, and Chinese, among other languages. In 2007, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) named asteroid 10986 Govert after him, and in 2014, he received the David N. Schramm Award for high-energy astrophysics science journalism from the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society.His latest book is Target Earth . Why science? We live in troubling times. Fake news and conspiracy theories abound, and trust in science is diminishing. Many adults don't seem to realize that almost everythi...

Search This Blog