The thing about the ocean is light doesn't travel through it so we can't look into it the way we look into the sky if i could invent an unphysical thing i would invent a pair of binoculars that let you look down into the water. If you want to understand the ocean you have to look with sound and it took us until the 1940s to work out what's going on where in the ocean. There are clues to do with the messengers of the ocean the sound and the light and then there are clues from the passengers and voyages. The second half of the book is written in terms of Messengers passengers and voyage because they're things that just get carried
To understand the world you need to understand the ocean. That’s the argument of physicist Helen Czerski who has long studied the complex ecosystems and forces that drive the ‘blue machine’ which covers 71% of our planet. Czerski joins Intelligence Squared to discuss her new book Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes Our World, and what we should know about these vast bodies of water – the waves, currents, invisible ocean walls and underwater waterfalls that are part of an interlinked system that shapes the world around us. In conversation with science editor of The Times Tom Whipple, Czerski discusses how, since the beginning of human civilisation, the oceans have been central to the way human societies have evolved and how threats like climate change and overfishing could threaten our future.
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