Soundings: Diving for Stories in the Beckoning Sea

by Kennedy Warne

Perhaps the closest a human being comes to visiting another planet is to descend into the sea. In Soundings, Kennedy Warne connects his lifelong exploration of the underwater world with a global story of humanity' s relationship with the sea. Drawing on more than 20 years of fieldwork for National Geographic, he shares experiences that range from diving with harp seals under the sea ice of the Gulf of St Lawrence to following the legendary ‘ sardine run' along South Africa' s Wild Coast; from watching turret-building ghost crabs in Arabia to witnessing the impact of dynamite fishing in the Philippines; from swimming with crocodiles in the Okavango Delta to finding seahorses on the Eastern Cape. From a myriad underwater encounters a wider conversation emerges about human engagement with the sea. One question How can we care for and reconnect with the oceans around us?

Genres: Nonfiction

244 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 8, 2023

Reviews

[Kevin Zarling · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars. The author, Kennedy Warne, is a marine zoologist/biologist and an accomplished nature writer whose reporting and reflections in this book will be of interest to anyone who cares about the natural world and humanity’s relationship with it. The Goodreads’ “book description” for this wonderful book can’t really be improved on as far as providing a nice summary overview of the book’s contents. What the book description doesn’t manage to do is extoll the author’s lovely and very descriptive prose that transports the reader to both the aquatic and terrestrial landscapes that he explores in the book (almost every chapter addresses not only an aquatic environment he visits, but also the local culture/society that lives in relationship with that environment). And “explore” is what the author does. I’ve had the privilege of meeting the author and spending some time with him on a National Geographic expedition cruise in the remote South Pacific. I am also an experienced scuba diver and traveller (although nothing on par with the author). So I can say without a doubt that Kennedy Warne is the “real deal,” a true explorer who has the rare technical skills and the experience to not only visit remote and often dangerous aquatic environments and other wild places that most people will never visit, but he also has the writing chops and artistic sensibility to report back on his experiences in an accessible, educational, interesting, and soulful way. I found some of his writing to have an almost poetic quality. We are fortunate that people like the author do what they do for a living.

A few themes emerged for me from this book. The first is that the interconnectedness of humanity (and its terrestrial home) and the aquatic world cannot be doubted, and both that relationship and the quality of our lives and ecosystems is in peril. The second theme is that we have much to learn from indigenous and aboriginal peoples about how to care for the planet’s aquatic environments. Finally, this book is subtly suffused with the theme of the author’s love for the ocean and the natural world in general. The book’s first chapter affectionately describes his heritage and upbringing in the Bay of Islands area of Aotearoa (New Zealand), and that chapter is the perfect launch pad for the stories that follow. Taken as a whole this book is not just a story of humanity’s relationship with the sea, it is also a beautiful, if only partial, memoir of Kennedy Warne’s life. I highly recommend this book for anyone who enjoys superb nature writing.

[Tayla · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book describes many underwater expeditions and projects that the author has undertaken in his life. I have a personal interest in marine biology and so found this book enthralling. It is deeply descriptive and provokes deep imagery of such underwater environments as if one was there. I did find myself often researching the species that were described in the book and this added further 'depth' and context to the imagery described. The accounts of each different journey had some chronological sense to them, exploring the challenges of marine conservation in different socio-economic environments. In this context it explores hope and optimism within the many barriers conservation of the marine environment faces. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to better understand the marine environment, it's creatures and their challenges on a world scale.