Full Fathom Five: Ocean Warming and a Father’s Legacy

Not since Jacques Cousteau has anyone brought to us the sense of the ocean as our home. Welcome Gordon Chaplin to the coral reefs of his youth fifty years later, following his father’s ground breaking research in ichthyology. When Fishes of the Bahamas documented hundreds of species half a century ago, nobody expected the death of the vibrant coral reefs, nor anticipated the radical effects on life within a warming ocean. The Chaplin Project takes the only vital census in history, ending the debate about Global Warming with hard evidence.

Despite his father’s legacy, Chaplin gives us far more than a science book with glossy templates of colorful fish. He takes us with him into the underworld of his childhood playground, now covered with a thick carpet of algae where once living coral built castles of color. He bypasses the arguments of exploiters with a simple truth wrapped delicately within the memoir. Dotted with lovely color photos and illustrations and punctuated with the flowing prose of a frustrated novelist, Chaplin offers us a glimmer of hope amid the urgent plea to save our dying home.