The soul of an octopus: a surprising exploration into the wonder of consciousness by Sy Montgomery is a excellent non-fiction story about getting the author’s experience getting to know herself and the world around her through the unexpected bonds with octopuses. Anne M. HartwellHello, welcome to Oceanbites! My name is Annie, I’m a marine research […]
Preparing the Ghost is almost certainly one of the strangest books about giant squid out there. Of course, I say that fully aware that there may not be many books about giant squid in existence, and fully unaware of the content and style of those books, having never read another book about giant squid. […]
I will be honest: I almost chucked this book clear across the room while reading it. It’s not that Katherine Harmon Courage’s Octopus! is at its root a bad book. It’s not poorly written—though at times Courage relies on cutesy prose, referring to octopus digestive tracts as “poopers,” for example, or discussing neuroscientists who endeavor […]
Oceanographers, take note: you’re probably happier than the rest of us. That, at least, seems likely given the central thesis of Wallace J. Nichols’ Blue Mind: The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, In, On, or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected, and Better at What You Do—a title that handily […]
It’s often easy to think of science outside of its social and historical contexts, as something pure, empirical, and incorruptible. But each drop of knowledge inevitably depends on what was uncovered and refined in the decades and centuries before it, as well as how it fits with the social and cultural opinions of its time. […]
I lived in Seattle for about a year before I started to really notice the water. It’s an impressive feat, when you think about it – Seattle is a city surrounded on almost all sides by water: Lake Washington to the east, Puget Sound to the west, and Lake Union and the ship canal cutting […]
As a novelist writing about oceanography, I spend a decent amount of time parsing scientific studies. Over the past several years my vocabulary has expanded to include terms like band saturation, turbidity currents, and foraminifera—phrases and words that had not existed in my wildest dreams when I first started writing. I’ve relied on studies and […]