Callum Roberts – författare

'Thrilling' Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall'Authoritative and furious, urgent and persuasive' Sunday Times'Compelling ... Roberts is that precious pearl: a practising scientist who not only knows his field inside out, but also understands how to write' Guardian Oceans are the most mysterious places on earth. Their depths remain largely unexplored, yet ninety-five percent of the planet's habitable space lies within them. And now the life they support is in the balance.Callum Roberts uses his lifetime's experience working with the oceans to take us on a panoramic tour beneath the seas, exploring the richness of life in the deep and how it has altered over the centuries. He shows the catastrophic impact of humanity on the oceans, but also how we can restore them to life.'For anyone who loves the sea, Ocean of Life is a wake-up call, an urgent alert' Daily Mail'At the heart of this book is a deep love of the ocean and a profound concern for its viability as a resource for us all' Nature'An impressive history ... one of this book's strengths is the many solutions Roberts outlines' Financial Times

Reef Life is the story of how Callum Roberts, Britain's pre-eminent marine conservation scientist, fell in lovewith coral reefs and embarked on a thirty-year career. He began as a young university student who had neverbeen abroad, spending a summer helping to map the unknown reefs of Saudi Arabia. And from that moment,when Callum first cleared his mask, he's never looked back, moving on to survey Sharm El Sheikh, and fromthere diving and researching all over the world, including Australia's imperilled Great Barrier Reef and the more resilient reefs of the Caribbean.His stories are astonishing, lyrical and laced with a wonderful wry humour - and they allow us privilegedaccess to, and understanding of, the science of our oceans and reefs. Reading this book will also commitreaders to support Callum's goal to get marine reserve status for ten percent of the world's ocean.

Our seas are host to an extraordinary variety of plant and animal life, but much of it remains mysterious and great imagery is surprisingly hard to find. Alex Mustard is one of the world's leading underwater photographers and his images are so crisp and immediate that the animals seem to swim out of the water towards you. This beautiful book gathers together a selection of his award-winning images and a number of new ones to create a vivid picture of the seas and oceans and the animals that inhabit them, each chapter accompanied by a 1500 word essay and extended captions written by leading natural history writer, Professor Callum Roberts. The text addresses the issue of change in the oceans along with tales of oceanography, marine life and human history in the seas and aims to help the reader to get to know the oceans, understand how marine animals live their lives and how they have, are and may well adapt to change.

Our seas are host to an extraordinary variety of plant and animal life, but much of it remains mysterious and great imagery is surprisingly hard to find. Alex Mustard is one of the world's leading underwater photographers and his images are so crisp and immediate that the animals seem to swim out of the water towards you. This beautiful book gathers together a selection of his award-winning images and a number of new ones to create a vivid picture of the seas and oceans and the animals that inhabit them, each chapter accompanied by a 1500 word essay and extended captions written by leading natural history writer, Professor Callum Roberts. The text addresses the issue of change in the oceans along with tales of oceanography, marine life and human history in the seas and aims to help the reader to get to know the oceans, understand how marine animals live their lives and how they have, are and may well adapt to change.

Humanity can make short work of the oceans’ creatures. In 1741, hungry explorers discovered herds of Steller’s sea cow in the Bering Strait, and in less than thirty years, the amiable beast had been harpooned into extinction. It’s a classic story, but a key fact is often omitted. Bering Island was the last redoubt of a species that had been decimated by hunting and habitat loss years before the explorers set sail.As Callum M. Roberts reveals in The Unnatural History of the Sea, the oceans’ bounty didn’t disappear overnight. While today’s fishing industry is ruthlessly efficient, intense exploitation began not in the modern era, or even with the dawn of industrialization, but in the eleventh century in medieval Europe. Roberts explores this long and colorful history of commercial fishing, taking readers around the world and through the centuries to witness the transformation of the seas.Drawing on firsthand accounts of early explorers, pirates, merchants, fishers, and travelers, the book recreates the oceans of the past: waters teeming with whales, sea lions, sea otters, turtles, and giant fish. The abundance of marine life described by fifteenth century seafarers is almost unimaginable today, but Roberts both brings it alive and artfully traces its depletion. Collapsing fisheries, he shows, are simply the latest chapter in a long history of unfettered commercialization of the seas.The story does not end with an empty ocean. Instead, Roberts describes how we might restore the splendor and prosperity of the seas through smarter management of our resources and some simple restraint. From the coasts of Florida to New Zealand, marine reserves have fostered spectacular recovery of plants and animals to levels not seen in a century. They prove that history need not repeat itself: we can leave the oceans richer than we found them.

''A ravishing, alarming account of these underwater palaces of wonder, and the existential threat they face from humanity and our warming climate ... Nature''s throne rooms are thrown open by Roberts''s prose'' - The Spectator''A vibrant memoir ... a fine introduction to the ecology of reefs and the existential threats they now face'' - The GuardianReef Life is a marine science memoir - the story of how Britain''s pre-eminent marine conservation scientist, fell in love with coral reefs. Callum Roberts begins as a young university student who had never been abroad, spending a summer helping to map the unknown reefs of Saudi Arabia. From the moment he first cleared his goggles, he''s never looked back, moving on to survey Sharm al-Sheikh, and from there diving and researching all over the world, including the Australia''s imperilled Great Barrier Reef and the more resilient reefs of the Caribbean, in a thirty-year career. His stories are astonishing, lyrical and laced with a wonderful wry humour - and they allow us privileged access to, and understanding of, the science of our oceans and reefs. Reading this book will also commit readers to support of Callum''s goal to get marine reserve status for ten percent of the world''s ocean.