Saving the Ocean with Carl Safina. Season 1

Gr 9 Up—Carl Safina is an award-winning marine biologist and the founder of the Blue Ocean Institute. In this series of ten half-hour segments, he concedes that there is a lot of very bad news regarding the oceans. Overfishing, pollution, global warming, and the death of many coral reefs all contribute to what seems to be an insurmountable and continuing decline in the viability of the world's waters. But in this series, Safina chooses to be optimistic by highlighting the efforts of many local communities, scientists, and innovators who are making efforts to begin to reverse the degradation. For example, a cooperative conservation in Belize is working to save sharks. In Zanzibar, Muslim leaders are encouraging positive environmental moves as being in accord with the Koran, and in New England, codfish are returning. The series emphasizes the possibility of local people solving local problems through self regulation. Each section is narrated by Safina from a variety of locations throughout the world. Although the emphasis is on good news, there is also a lot of grim footage of the slaughter of marine life in unregulated areas, and any advances that have been made sometimes seem lost in the vast distress of the oceans. Individual segments will be useful for classes studying the environment, pollution, marine biology, and sustainability.—Eva Elisabeth VonAncken, formerly, Trinity-Pawling School, NY