Book Reviews

World Ocean Census,

by Darlene Trew Crist, Gail Scocroft, James M. Harding Jr.

Firefly Books Ltd

Richmond Hill, Canada; 2009

 

In today’s global society, awareness of the deteriorating state of world oceans is on the rise. But what many don’t fully comprehend is the significance of this destruction. While most of us can appreciate the beauty of a powerful sunset ducking behind the Pacific horizon or the enjoyment of a fresh piece of fish caught just that morning, many cannot appreciate the extent of poor health that our oceans is in. Over the past 50 years, 90% of large fish have disappeared. Half of the Caribbean’s coral reefs have been destroyed.

 

As the opening line of World Ocean Census reads: “Until recently, many had the impression that the diversity of life in the sea was much lower than the complexity and richness of life on the land, especially tropical rainforests and temperate woodlands,” but it is this book that finally shows us the true diversity below the surface.

 

World Ocean Census is not just an inventory of our seas, but a decade-long global project intended to observe, analyze and tackle the great questions of marine life. Launched in 2000, with the goal of producing the world’s first-ever ocean census by 2010, the Census of Marine Life (CML) brought together 2,000 explorers and scientists from more than 80 nations, with the goal of answering three main questions: What once lived in the global ocean? What is living there now? And, what will live there in the future?

 

The significance of looking to what first existed in our oceans is stressed here. Biologist Daniel Pauly hands us a poignant argument: “Because people gauge what is ‘natural’ according to their own experiences, successive generations of marine scientists have overlooked changes that had taken place in the oceans before their time.” If we do not know what has come before, how are we to determine what is missing or what is out of synch from the norm? The first major section of this book hones in on this point: You can’t accurately move forward without knowing where you’ve come from. This first third of the book explains the inner workings of the ocean and reveals the things we don’t even think about beneath the surface. For example, the world’s oceans are like a conveyer belt, inter-connected in the depths of the oceans. A drop of water in the Atlantic Ocean will eventually sink down to the undercurrents, and travel along this great ocean conveyer belt, until returning to its point of departure almost 1,000 years later.

 

This amazing revelation takes you on a wild trip to the depths of the oceans, crossing paths with mammals from surface-swimming seals to creatures that look almost extra-terrestrial like, living well beyond the depths of sunlight and oxygen. It is estimated that 95 to 98 per cent of our oceans are yet to be explored, and with that comes thousands of new discoveries. With new technologies, this Census takes us to uncharted and never-before seen places and species, allowing explorers to track ocean life better than ever before, thanks to new developments in sound and light technologies, such as sound-scan sonar. Developments in animal tagging has allowed scientists to follow rare and too hard to otherwise track species as they go about their daily oceanic lives.

 

Looking to the future, we are shown the devastating effects that global warming will have on the oceans’ ecosystems, and also how ocean species may adapt to their changing environments. A point that cannot be lost, though, is: “Because species depend on each other for their survival, the demise of one can lead to the decrease or demise of others. When species disappear or remain only a few in number, ecosystems may not possess enough species and genetic diversity to enable them to survive.” With historic drawings, statistics and records, we are able to see the decline of marine resources tracked throughout history.

 

It is from this understanding, coupled with discoveries that the large team made over the past decade, that allows conclusions to be drawn about the future state of marine life, our oceans, and by a very real relationship, the human population. CML has determined that half of all world food comes from the sea. Pollution, over-fishing and climate change can have a very real effect on the amount of edible marine life that exists. At the current rate of overfishing, a prediction is that the world’s ocean fisheries could collapse by as soon as 2048.

 

This Census provides the “first-ever catalogue of marine life, including data on abundance, distribution and diversity, which will serve as a baseline from which future changes in populations can be measured. This in turn will provide policy and decision makers around the globe with the scientific foundation from which to make future management decisions, and possibly to take action to help preserve and restore marine life resources to healthy levels.”

 

With touching photography throughout its 256 pages, this glossy 9x11 hard cover beauty would be a wonderful gift for anyone passionate about the ocean, environment or wildlife.

 

Review by Michelle Singerman

 

DVD REVIEW

A.M. Yoga (DVD)

GAIAM Media Inc.

Boulder, Colorado, 2008

 

If you are like most people, your mornings are hectic and stressful, made worse if you did not get enough sleep the night before. Feeling tired and tense before your day has even begun is counterproductive and unhealthy. But with effort and determination, you can alter your morning routine to fit in some exercise, which will help you face the day feeling calm, centered and joyful, rather than hurried and harried. Yoga is an excellent form of exercise to start the day off on the right foot. It will work out morning stiffness, release tension, and energize and motivate you to tackle the day ahead. And while many may not be able to fit in a full yoga workout in the morning, Rodney Yee’s A.M. Yoga, with its five different 20-minute yoga routines, offers a perfect solution (from prep time to putting everything away, you should actually set aside a half hour).

 

Each of the five segments has a different focus, allowing you to choose one or more of your favourites: standing poses (warrior, triangle, chair and tree), twists, backbends, forward bends and hip openers. At the end of each session you are treated to a proper, albeit short, relaxation pose. Some of the poses require the use of props, so along with a mat, you will need a strap, a couple of blankets rolled together and a block.

 

Yee’s impressive knowledge, credentials, motivational instruction style, and beautiful execution and form are all reasons why he is one of North America’s best known and admired yoga teachers. His cuing is precise, and he projects natural warmth and quiet encouragement throughout the lessons. Although the routines are not advanced, if you have never done yoga before you may want to take some classes to familiarize yourself with the poses and learn proper breathing techniques before trying this DVD.

 

From a personal perspective, A.M. Yoga has helped improve my own practice, teaching me something new each time. And doing the hip opener segment always guarantees that any tightness or discomfort in my hips, thighs and low back will melt away.

 

Yee has said that every time he practises, he feels as if he is “waking with a clean slate out of a deep sleep.” We are offered a chance to experience those same feelings by joining him every morning with A.M. Yoga.

 

Review by Susannah Kent

 

DVD REVIEW

Ultimate Body – Yoga Fitness

(Exercise TV Presentation)

Allegro Corporation

Portland, Oregon; 2009

 

Prefer a more energetic workout to begin your day? Yoga Fitness might be a perfect fit. This DVD is 80 minutes long, but is nicely divided to suit a variety of fitness levels, yoga experience and personal time constraints. Yoga Fitness Plus is 46 minutes long, Lower Body Yoga is 22 minutes long, and five mini segments are approximately two minutes each.

 

The five smaller segments are beneficial for those just starting out, offering a short tutorial of sorts on forward bend, side twist, and spinal balance and stretching poses, an adaptation of the sun salutation, and neck stretches for tension relief.

 

Trainer Tom Morley’s Lower Body Yoga segment targets the hips, thighs and gluteus with poses such as chair, crescent, lunge and temple. This portion of the DVD is perfect if you are short on time or are a beginner. Morley is personable and his explanation of each pose is straightforward. Perhaps because his execution is not as graceful or precise as a Rodney Yee’s, he makes the viewer feel comfortable – that it is OK to not have perfectly straight lines, and to be a bit wobbly. It has the feel of an every-person yoga routine, which will help encourage novice Yogis. Still, the workout is challenging. I have only done it once so far, but my legs and glutes really felt the burn.

 

The Yoga Fitness Plus portion of this DVD, however, is definitely not for the beginner. Although trainer Elise Gulan demonstrates two levels of difficulty, both are for the experienced Yogi. But if you’re game, there will be huge benefits. The sequences focus on creating strong, lean muscles, with added emphasis on improving balance. Certainly Gulan is an ideal model of what can be achieved through a regular practice such as this one.

 

Gulan’s execution is as flawless as it is beautiful to watch. I particularly liked the camera angles as they gave a clear viewing from each side as she flowed through poses, often adding a higher level of difficulty to strengthen the core or increase balance and stability. And her intelligent and poetic cuing – “kiss the knee,” “heart centre open,” and “tailbone spinning down,” is inspiring.

 

As yet, I have not been able to complete this workout, but with Gulan’s excellent instruction style, her sharing of how it took her three months to achieve one particular pose, and her motivating words, “wherever you are [in terms of your practice] is perfection,” makes me hopeful that I will soon be up for the challenge.

 

Review by Susannah Kent

 

NEW BOOK RELEASE: HARVEST PILGRIMS

by Vincenzo Pietropaolo

Between The Lines

Toronto, ON; 2009

 

Like migratory birds, most of Canada’s 20,000 “guest” farm workers arrive in the spring and leave in the autumn. Hailing primarily from Mexico, Jamaica, and smaller countries of the Caribbean, many of these temporary workers have become entrenched in the Canadian labour force and are now the mainstay of many traditional family farms in Canada.

 

Making the trip year after year, these workers improve their standard of living with their Canadian savings, but in the process they lose a sense of belonging with their homelands.

 

Since 1984, Vincenzo Pietropaolo has been photographing migrant workers and recording their stories, in the process travelling to 40 locations throughout Ontario and also to their homes and communities in Mexico, Jamaica and Montserrat. The resulting photographs have been highly acclaimed internationally through many publications and exhibitions, including a travelling show curated by the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography that opened in Mexico City. With a foreword by Naomi Rosenblum, this beautiful and timely book of photography and exposition aims to shed light on a subject about which many Canadians know far too little.

 

Vincenzo Pietropaolo is an award-winning photographer whose work has been widely published in Canada and abroad. An Italian-Canadian, he and his family immigrated to Canada in 1959. He is the author of Celebration of Resistance: Ontario’s Days of Action (1999), and Not Paved with Gold: Italian-Canadian Immigrants in the 1970s (2006).

 

Praise for Harvest Pilgrims:

 

“The tomatoes are local, all right – but we’ve flown whole villages of Mexicans here to pick them for us, for low pay and in bleak conditions. Those labourers look out of Pietropaolo’s honest black and white photographs, their hands full of fruit, as though posing us a question. Is this the right way?”

 

– Michele Landsberg, author and activist