Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes Our World

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By 2021, Helen Czerski tells us, CPRs had been towed for 7 million nautical miles, which would take them 326 times around the world. Someone – in this case a team of researchers in Plymouth – then needs to examine, classify and count the contents of each trawl. Lively and engrossing [...] Alongside her vivid portrayal of waters sliding over one another, colliding, mixing and turning into ice or water vapour, she explains how the living beings within the sea also form part of the 'blue machine' [...] [Cerzski's personal experience of both Polynesian canoes off Hawaii and ice floes near the North Pole is not icing on the cake but part of the argument of this excellent and important book." While it was all good and entertaining, the author really found her voice in Part Three of the book: The Blue Machine and Us. It was also in this section that I found the real flaws of this book as well. I get that 'the road to disaster is paved with good intentions' and that the ocean is so complex, and there's no way to begin to harness hydropower without having unintended consequences. However, in then in the next line- "one thing we know for sure is that we need to wean ourselves off greenhouse gasses." The author making the point that we need to learn how to live with the ocean, but doesn't want that to have unintended consequences, but also recognizes the need for somewhat drastic change because humanities current course of action is having disastrous effects on our environment, but doesn't want to propose any recommendations. When you splash through the waves at the beach, you’re connected via seawater to every drop of water in the global ocean. You might have to go the long way round, but you can get to exotic parrotfish, hydrothermal vents, icebergs and aquatic deserts without leaving the water you’re paddling in.

In this captivating and urgently-needed book, Czerski weaves a wonderful, watery spell, entwining spectacular science with poetic awe as she expertly guides readers through the workings of a vast, unfamiliar world. Moving and thrilling, The Blue Machine tells us about the seas but also makes us care: an epic love story that captures the ocean's beating heart. Jo Marchant, author of Cure and The Human Cosmos

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A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting. A fascinating dive into the essential engine that drives our world. Czerski brings the oceans alive with compelling stories that masterfully navigate this most complex system.' A dazzle of stories beautifully told...Czerski argues throughout that to truly see the miraculous oceans, to understand and to feel our connection to them, is vital and integral to our history and our future. Her outstanding book advances that understanding and honours that connection. Her readers will see the seas anew. Horatio Clare, Telegraph Czerski is a physical oceanographer, and frames the ocean as a heat engine, the blue machine, driven by the difference in solar heating between the equator and North and South poles, with complications from tidal forces, wind, differences in salinity – which, like temperature, affects density – and shape of continental land masses and undersea crust. They generate complex effects, some fast and some unfolding very slowly, in a great, layered mass of water that is in constant motion.

I feel kind of mean giving this book a three star rating, because for someone who is scientifically interested in the sea then this would be a 5 star for sure. Czerski argues throughout that to truly see the miraculous oceans, to understand and to feel our connection to them, is vital and integral to our history and our future. Her outstanding book advances that understanding and honours that connection. Her readers will see the seas anew. That still accounts for just a small fraction of the ocean, an interconnected mass of salt water thousands of miles in extent. As anyone who has looked properly at a globe, or studied the pictures of our planet from space, knows, water covers almost three-quarters of the Earth’s surface. And although on a planetary scale it is just a smear of moisture, it is still deep beyond human ken – the average depth of the whole lot is 3.68 kilometres. Down there, there are water movements vaster than empires and more slow, currents of matter and energy with a global reach.

In Helen Czerski’s hands, the mechanical becomes magical. An instant classic.—Tristan Gooley, author of How to Read Water: Clues and Patterns from Puddles to the Sea