Full Fathom Five: Ocean Warming and a Father's Legacy

by Gordon Chaplin

Gordon Chaplin’s father was a seemingly happy-go-lucky, charismatic adventurer who married a wealthy heiress and somehow transformed himself into the author of a landmark scientific study, Fishes of the Bahamas , published by the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. As a young boy, the author took part in collecting specimens for his father. Fifty years later, he was asked to join a team from the same institution studying the state of sea life in the Bahamian waters where he grew up, as measured against his father’s benchmark. The first of the sea changes presented in this eloquent book stems from climate change and is the drastic transformation of ocean life due to global warming. The second is his father’s miraculous transformation from presumed playboy into scientist. And the third involves the author’s own complicated relationship with his parents and in particular his father, as he grew older and assumed the part of the prodigal son. Fifty years later, returning to his childhood home, he delves into the mysteries of his father’s life and the impossibility of ever truly recovering the past, or ever returning home.

Illustrated with gorgeous color plates from the original Fishes of the Bahamas and featuring descriptions of exquisite undersea beauty and heartrending devastation, this is a status report on climate change unlike any other, both a report from the field and an intensely personal reckoning.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Memoir

264 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2013

About the author

Gordon Chaplin is the author of the novel Joyride and several works of non-fiction, including Dark Wind: A Survivors Tale of Love and Loss: Full Fathom Five: Ocean Warming and a Father's Legacy, and Fever Coast Log: at Sea in Central America. A former journalist for Newsweek, the Baltimore Sun, and the Washington Post, he has worked on marine conservation with the Baja group Niparaja and since 2003 has been a research associate with the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. He lives with his wife Sarah and young daughter Rosie in New York City and Hebron, NY, and is the father of two older daughters, Diana and Julia.

Reviews

[Adam Orford · Rating 1 out of 5]

Apparently this fellow has written some other pretty good books, which might color your perception of this one. As for me, I'm a newcomer. What I read was a memoir written by a man in his late 60s who now lives in a fancy apartment in Manhattan, who enjoyed an incredibly privileged if pretty strange childhood in the Bahamas, son of a Philadelphia blue blood and an English jack-of-all-trades who he idolizes despite the occasional culturally acceptable pere-a-fils disciplinary physical violence . During that time, which the younger Chaplin describes in rather pleasing fashion, he mostly accompanied his father during the early days of SCUBA, as they went about poisoning (er, collecting) fish in what became the basis of a very famous scientific survey from the late 1960s. After getting sent to private school in the States, he grows into a pretty unappealing teenager who spends most of his time lusting after his cousin, which lusty feelings he describes in kind of uncomfortable detail for a book about fish. It later transpires that he grew into a pretty unpleasant adult too - leaving his wife and two teenage daughters for another woman, because reasons. It's ok though because his father had an affair too.

Fast forward thirty years, and our hero has written several well-regarded books and sailed around the world, but never returned home. He is contacted by a scientific institute to return to the Bahamas and re-conduct the surveys that made his father famous. Accepting the charge, he accompanies three lady scientists (his terminology, never simply "scientists") whose swimsuit-clad bodies are remarked upon frequently and favorably. This would just be embarrassing until you remember that one of them is a trans woman, so... progress? The recurring conflict is that he cannot believe anyone would have a problem with them applying massive doses of rotenone to delicate and highly stressed aquatic life systems, because he remembers it never seemed to do any harm to the reefs back in the 60s, when he was 12, and wise. Older now, in elegiac terms he weaves together the deaths that lie beneath his shallow surface - his father, a dear family friend, his partner, his mother - and the pull he'll always feel to disappear beneath the waves forever.

Eventually his team secures the necessary rotenone permits - the authorities are persuaded that the value of the studies merit some temporary harm to aquatic life. The important thing is that a day of swimming around in chemical-infused water numbs his penis, until his colleagues discover that they need to mix the rotenone with (unregulated?) detergent to get it to distribute through the water properly, so it can kill the fish as it is supposed to without any unfortunate side effects. He is sure to let us know that his wife came to visit, that she is 20 years younger than he is, and that the effects of rotenone exposure are not permanent.

The author feels that he is an ecologist, because he appreciates Aldo Leopold. He is not an ecologist; he is the funding. The words "warming water temperatures" first appear very late in the book, in a quote written by a different lady scientist, and he spends the last quarter of his book mixing together some of the conclusions of the new report with his very basic overview of some of the concerns about the worldwide destruction of marine habitat.

In sum, the man is a good writer and has led an interesting life, but I found him and his book repulsive.

[Drew Villeneuve · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the most infuriating reads I've had in a while. Chaplin is a good writer, in that his prose and structuring lend themselves to a very readable book. The story itself is also ripe with promise for a touching story about revisiting a place of Chaplin's idyllic youth and the legacy of a father who was instrumental in the cataloging of Caribbean fishes in the 1950s and 60s. There are changes to confront upon revisiting his childhood haunt, both environmental as Chaplin funds several scientific expeditions to replicate his father's sampling efforts to understand how climate change and human impacts have affected Caribbean reefs, and personal as Chaplin confronts the complexities of his family's troubled dynamics and legacy.

HOWEVER - this is truly an uncomfortable read. Chaplin comes off as a boorish, chauvinist, and spoiled byproduct of a gilded colonial era in the Bahamas. Throughout the book, Chaplin interacts with many scientists, and takes great pains to always reference the women scientists as "lady" scientist. Chaplin continuously describes the physical features and attractiveness of his collaborators, making sure to remark on how they look in their bathing suits and how his father would approve of the "scene". Chaplin always seems surprised at the work ethic of the "lady" scientists, calling them "impressive," but in a way that makes the reader question whether he is thinking of their research or attractiveness. There is a long uncomfortable passage describing Chaplin lusting after his underage cousin, which does not seem to have any appreciative contribution to the overall story. Chaplin seems unwilling to paint anything he or his father had done in a negative light, including spousal infidelity.

Overall, I am disappointed with this book, which I thought had so much potential. I wonder how many passages passed the review of an editor in 2013, much less how some of the luminaries of the ichthyological and marine biology fields felt like they could sign off on this book in good faith by writing blurbs for the back cover. Chaplin himself doesn't seem to grasp the core scientific motivation for doing a resurvey of Bahamian reefs 50 years later, only thinking about the impact of such a resurvey on his father's and his own 'legacy'.

In sum, a well-written book reflecting on an important era in marine biology with some very outdated, uncomfortable takes.

[Curt · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Discovered this book when I was getting ready to go to the Bahamas, it was a fascinating read and a great edition to any non fiction reading shelf.

[Cami · Rating 1 out of 5]

This guy is crazy for putting his cousin kissing story into a published book. Also, stop mentioning that your colleague is pregnant. It's not relevant and a bit misogynistic especially considering you have no education compared to her.

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only took so long to read because of my job, but otherwise couldn't put it down! really enjoyed the family experiences with the return for more study. Beautiful imagery and wonderful moments.