From the Bookshelf of Science and Inquiry…

The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works

Helen Czerski

Start date: August 1, 2024

Finish date: August 31, 2024

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Aug 31, 2024 aPriL does feral sometimes rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, academic-notations, science

‘The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works’ by Helen Czerski is a wonderful in-depth science book about the ocean. It is full of information I did not know! Czerski uses what I would call very enthusiastic descriptions in writing about a subject she clearly loves! This saves the book from the tediousness one usually experiences from reading a book with as much information as a scientific textbook. Instead she has created much excitement in learning what usually are dry facts!

I was born and raised i ‘The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works’ by Helen Czerski is a wonderful in-depth science book about the ocean. It is full of information I did not know! Czerski uses what I would call very enthusiastic descriptions in writing about a subject she clearly loves! This saves the book from the tediousness one usually experiences from reading a book with as much information as a scientific textbook. Instead she has created much excitement in learning what usually are dry facts!

I was born and raised in a port city, Seattle, Washington, where the nearby ocean has been an underlying constant in my everyday life, so common for me that I barely notice its presence. Everywhere I have lived around the Puget Sound, the ocean has been very near, with the gulls always in the skies and the views of boats, ferries, container ships and cruise ships only a five-minute drive away. I owned a 22-foot Reinell “sedan” boat with my husband, with enough space for a small cabin where inside was a gas stove, table, and a place below to sleep. But driving a sedan boat on weekends on Elliot Bay, seeing orcas jump occasionally and avoiding the wake of ferries and container ships, or watching the hydros on Lake Washington in summer while getting a tan on our somewhat rocky beaches, or water skiing as part of the festivities of yet another sea-based fair (eating oyster contests are horrible to see, btw) do nothing in really knowing the ocean.

I have copied the book blurb which is precise and true:

”A scientist’s exploration of the “ocean engine”—the physics behind the ocean’s systems—and why it matters.

All of Earth’s oceans, from the equator to the poles, are a single engine powered by sunlight, driving huge flows of energy, water, life, and raw materials. In The Blue Machine , physicist and oceanographer Helen Czerski illustrates the mechanisms behind this defining feature of our planet, voyaging from the depths of the ocean floor to tropical coral reefs, estuaries that feed into shallow coastal seas, and Arctic ice floes.

Through stories of history, culture, and animals, she explains how water temperature, salinity, gravity, and the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates all interact in a complex dance, supporting life at the smallest scale—plankton—and the largest—giant sea turtles, whales, humankind.

Most importantly, however, Czerski reveals that while the ocean engine has sustained us for thousands of years, today it is faced with urgent threats. By understanding how the ocean works, and its essential role in our global system, we can learn how to protect our blue machine.”

The following is my extremely clumsy non-scientist style of telling a short story version that Czerski explains scientifically in this book in depth:

Czerski writes about how each of the locale-specific currents and gyros of ‘each’ of the different oceans (it really is one ocean, though we humans have given names to the ocean depending on its location) spin and flow, affected by and being affected by winds, air and depth temperatures, the light and heat from the sun striking and affecting the ocean surface and many types of small and microscopic sea critters that use photosynthesis, salinity (which varies!) and the topography of the ocean floor. The water’s energy exchanges and its critters are affected if they are in that part of the ocean which lies in the polar regions or if in the equator. The ocean controls weather behavior and patterns. The ocean has layers of water which behave differently and separately from the other layers. These layers only rarely ‘mix’, but they do in certain seasons near certain locations, which she describes in detail. The mixing is important. A lot of ocean critters, from microscopic to the blue whales (each of which Czerski describes, from life cycle to how they contribute to the circle of life), would not be alive except for what normally lies on the ocean floor being shot up to the surface in certain places on the earth, mingling for the first time. This works vice versa, as well, when surface critters die and slowly sink (sometimes taking decades) to the bottom of the sea. The layers near the ocean floor are vastly different in composition than the ones near the top of the ocean. If people swim in the ocean and believe they know it well as a result, they are wrong! For example, deep down, given the pressure difference of the layers for instance, there are waterfalls that flow up! Up! From the bottom of the ocean upwards to the surface!

Czerski also discusses basically how each of the types of carbon atoms of the living/elements in the air (animal, mineral, vegetable) were in balance with the exchange of types of carbon atoms (animal, mineral, vegetable) in the ocean (poo and eating figures high in many of the carbon exchanging strategies of nature, which Czerski describes in great detail how this critter or that molecule functions in the chain of life) - all of the types of carbon atoms in balance - at least until people began overfishing. And burning carbons for fuel/energy.

I knew almost nothing of what I read in this book! I will quote Czerski, giving her the last word in my review:

””We’re also learning that even this vast body of water isn’t big enough to shrug off the influence of humankind. An increasing awareness of our effect on the ocean is slowly seeping into the public agenda, dragging behind it a conversation that is decades overdue. But this conversation faces a massive obstacle. It’s almost impossible to discuss what to do about something changing if you don’t initially know how it works. If a doctor tells a patient that they have a problem with their kidneys, the patient probably already has at least a vague idea about where their kidneys are and what they’re up to. They learned about that part of their own personal life-support system at school. But that’s not the case for the oceans. When we see a news story about the long-term decline in the numbers of krill in the Southern Ocean, it sounds generally like a bad thing. But there’s far more to it than the risk of whales going hungry. Krill are a part of the ocean engine life that is woven into the fluid machine, and we need to understand at last some of the context before we can discuss the change and take appropriate action.””

The book has an extensive References and Index section. I highly recommend putting this book on your TBR list! ...more

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Mar 09, 2024 CatReader rated it liked it

Shelves: slco

After reading journalist Susan Casey's The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean, I was hoping to find a similar book written by an actual scientist on a similar topic. Czerski fits the demographic bill -- she has a PhD in physics and has had a robust research career studying ocean bubble acoustics. Unfortunately, I didn't love The Blue Machine -- while the descriptions of the science are sound, I felt like the narrative could be improved by less density and repetition. ...more

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