Oceans created, shaped, and sustain not just human life, but all life on Earth, and perhaps beyond it. Deep Water is a reckoning with humankind’s complex relationship with these oceans.

In this thrilling work — a blend of history, science, nature, and environmental writing — acclaimed author James Bradley plunges into the unknown to explore the deepest recesses of the natural world, guiding readers through the atomic creation of the oceans to the wonders contained within, like the schools of fish who use electromagnetic sensing to migrate across the globe; describing how human populations have circumnavigated the world by boat; and interrogating the environmental catastrophe already impacting our lives. Deep Water celebrates the ocean’s glories and the extraordinary efforts of the scientists and researchers currently unlocking its secrets.

Offering vital new ways of understanding humanity’s place on our planet, Bradley shows that the oceans might yet save us all.

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‘Bradley vividly conveys the awe-inspiring scale of the deep seas, both in space and time. Celebrating our blue planet and highlighting the perils it faces as a result of our own greed and ignorance.’

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‘Deep Water is written with panache and argued with compelling clarity. The result is a provocative, engrossing read.’

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‘Bradley depicts the awe-inspiring wonder of the world’s largest ecosystem, making our disregard for its inhabitants painful to read. Despite this, Bradley highlights the oceans’ adaptability, resilience, and our capacity for change.’

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‘In vivid detail, James Bradley unravels the science of life below the surface as he interrogates our relationship with the ocean. It is not only home to marine life, but to meaning; to a different way of understanding time, the world and our place within it. Deep Water is an ambitious, far reaching work. Against the spectre of climate breakdown there is a sense of urgency in Deep Water, but beauty and pause too.’

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‘This is a book that offers much, and should find a space in every library, on every home bookshelf. I read with eyes open wide, I was fascinated and felt connected, startled, and in shock, but also energised and hopeful. This is a book that feels as though it is for everyone, it’s inclusive and welcoming even as it plunges deeply into the environmental emergency we have created.’

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‘Bradley weaves natural history, climate studies, and trivia into an elegant whole that drives home the dire threat global warming poses to the ocean, all delivered in plaintive prose. It’s a galvanising call to action.’

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‘A novelist, activist, and naturalist writes a paean to the sea … A satisfying tribute to the wonders of the ocean and the myriad dangers it faces.’

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‘[A] mesmerising work of nonfiction that will inspire awe and make you weep. It’s a rare work of nonfiction that can make the reader weep with wonder then grief from one sentence to the next … [P]aints a portrait of a world not just teeming with life, but whose cycles have a profound impact on our terrestrial existence … This whole book is a subtle but mesmerising call to action; a reminder of just how extraordinary this planet’s oceans are, and a plea to every individual to keep fighting to save what’s left of them.’

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‘This bracing, vibrant work invites readers’ compassion, humility and reflection as we choose our actions in this “heaving, injured world”.’

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‘Like all good nature writing, Deep Water invokes the beauty of the nonhuman world in terms both down-to-earth and mythopoetic … Dazzling.’

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‘Bradley’s prose is a delight to read. The book’s enduring message is about the effect of climate change and how we must reverse it. If readers need convincing, this book may do it.’

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‘There is something about a prose writer who can deliver a view of the world that is poetic, scientifically detailed and clear to the layman all at once. Something almost biblical. James Bradley is one of those writers, as a novelist, a poet, an essayist, and a writer of nonfiction. His new book Deep Water is a revelation.’

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‘The research is thorough, the content fascinating, the writing is clear and elegant; and Bradley’s concluding reflections in each section nicely draw the reader to reflect on the wider contemporary issues.’

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‘Poignant. [Deep Water] catalogues how cruelly we have treated the oceans.’

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