As one raised on the north Oregon coast in a family with deep and long-standing ties to the fishing industry, and still living within a relatively short drive from it, I am perhaps a bit more aware of marine affairs than the average person. So not surprisingly, when a copy of Professor C. Drew Harvell’s Ocean Outbreak; Confronting the Rising Tide of Marine Disease arrived from University of California Press, you can believe that my interest was immediately piqued.
Dr. Harvell, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, at Cornell University, is a world-renowned researcher in the areas of ocean biodiversity, ocean health and sustainability, and the ecology of infectious disease. And as many will also know from her previous book A Sea of Glass; Searching for the Blaschkas’ Fragile Legacy in an Ocean at Risk (also published by University of California Press), she is a writer with a style that is as captivating as it is informative.
In this present work, she focuses her attention on how “four iconic marine animals – corals, abalone, salmon, and starfish – have been devastated by disease.” Drawing upon decades of research, she explores the patterns, similarities, and differences in how these outbreaks have been exacerbated by the present state of our shared planet’s oceans.
