Ireland's Ocean A Natural History

About this book

Popular curiosity about the ocean around Ireland and the importance of care for marine life in current and future exploitation continues to increase. Ireland's Ocean sets out to engage this popular curiosity and concern. Recent marine exploration, research and mapping bring dramatic growth in knowledge of an economic region of seabed in the Atlantic, Celtic and Irish Seas, the Atlantic extending almost 500 km from the coast to beyond the edge of the continental shelf. Description of this underwater landscape is followed by an account of the natural forces influencing the internal world of the sea and its interactions with our climate, including currents, winds and waves, and the machinery of the Atlantic pump that draws warmth northward to Ireland. Included is the sea's role as a sponge for carbon, crucial in terms of global warming and increasing acidification of seawater.

This is followed by a guide to the ecology and teeming diversity of life in the ocean from corals and plankton to whales, fish migrations, and the behaviour of top predators. Ireland's Ocean concludes with new directions in Ireland's marine research, and the international problems of fishery control, climate change, wind and wave power, and the need for care in the exploitation of all the ocean's resources. Illustrated in full colour, Ireland's Ocean opens windows to the ocean's life and promise.

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Biography

Michael Viney & Ethna Viney are both widely recognised for their work as journalists, documentary film producers and authors. In 1977 they moved to a one-acre smallholding in County Mayo. It was then Michael began his weekly column, Another Life for The Irish Times, which has continued since.