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The sea change needed to protect the oceans

By Bob Holmes

23 May 2012

HUMANITY has always treated the oceans as infinite – an inexhaustible source for fish and a limitless sink for waste. Marine biologist Callum Roberts aims to change that.

In Ocean of Life, he takes us on a comprehensive tour of the ways human activity is altering Earth’s oceans – mostly for the worse – and outlines what we can do about it.

It is a depressing tale. Roberts shows how over the past few centuries we have fished out the seas, changed the climate, acidified the oceans and caused massive dead zones on the sea floor. We have polluted with plastic, chemicals and…

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