This is the worst of several environmental books I have reviewed, largely because its style is too chatty, the type and presentation formats chosen by the editor are terrible and make it difficult to read and enjoy, and there is isn't a single map or chart or table or figure in the entire book. Bearing in mind that this book made the cut from hundreds that I could have bought and read, and it made the second more rigorous cut to be reviewed, these comments should be taken as they are intended: this is a super book that got screwed up by the publisher and a lack of decent editorial guidance. It should be fixed in the second edition, and I hope it gets to a second edition. Given the author's clearly superior access to and understanding of the individual personalities and organizational players across America, I am really stunned and disappointed that there is not an appendix to the book listing all of these, with contact information and URLs.

There is so much solid, worthwhile information in this book, including valuable insights in why Western political interests are undermining proper representation of our national oceans, coasts, and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in Congress, that I would urge those interested in the oceans (hugely more important to our future than the Amazon or globla forestry, just to make the point), to buy this book, suffer its limitations, and ultimately benefit from the wisdom and experience of the author, for whom my respect is unqualified and whole-hearted. In passing, it would probably be helpful if the first thing we all demanded was that EEZ stand for Exclusive Environmental Zone, rather than treating the oceans as a for-profit target area.

There is one other information-related observation I would make that emerged from reading this book: both the United Nations and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are clearly doing heroic and deeply important work vital to the future of the oceans--and they are doing a terrible job of communicating the basic information about the oceans and their work to the larger world of voters and concerned citizens. What really came home to me as I reflected on what to emphasize in this review is that there is a very wide, almost impenetratable, barrier between what the UN and NOAA know, and what is being communicated to the citizens who have the right to know (they paid for that information with their tax dollars) and the need to know and the desire to know. From this I would say that the next big step for those who would seek to save the oceans, is to demand that all UN and US Government information paid for by the taxpayer be put online henceforth, available at no further cost to the public. It is this information, the bullets and beans of the information war between corporate and citizen interests, that will decide the future of the oceans.

By David Liscio

If it's possible to wax poetically about the way offshore oil rigs attract fish, while still remaining a staunch environmentalist, then author David Helvarg has succeeded.

Aboard a helicopter, he writes, "We circle around the flat-topped platform called Pompano. Owned by BP-Amoco, it is the second tallest bottom-fixed structure in the world, drilling into the ocean floor 1,310 feet below the surface. About 700 feet wide at its base, it is taller than the Empire State Building."

Another platform, Amberjack, is described as "the ultimate Tinkertoy. An active drilling rig, it towers 272 feet from the waterline to the top of its bottle-shaped derrick. Its density of utilized space is a structural salute to human ingenuity."

Author of "The War Against the Greens," Helvarg's latest book, "Blue Frontier: Saving America's Living Seas," (New York: W.H. Freeman & Co., 2001), delivers in-depth reporting on subjects such as ocean mining, reef management, oil exploration, over-fishing, and government ineptitude when it comes to formulating sound environmental policy. The author clearly has divided his time between research libraries and the field. He has visited the underwater living quarters of scientists off the coast of Key West, climbed the towering oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, and gone diving off Monterey where Californians keep sharp lookout for white sharks, all with the intention to see up-close what's going on.

At the start of the chapter on offshore petroleum drilling, Helvarg quotes an oil company spokesman recalling the Huntington Beach oil spill of 1990. The spokesman says, "Then this Hollywood star pulls up in his limo, must have been half a block long, wanting to know what we've done to his beach. And I'm thinking, hey that limo of yours doesn't run on sunbeams you know."

Helvarg has been beneath the surface of the sea to examine precisely the rampant devastation of fragile ecosystems, the destruction of coral reefs by disease, human waste, phosphate blanketing, and sheer overuse, particularly dive boats that anchor rather than use fixed moorings.

Although the Alaskan coast dominates the news in 2001 whenever discussion turns to offshore drilling, Helvarg noted, "There are some 4,000 platforms operating in the Gulf of Mexico today. Offshore drilling accounts for 20 percent of U.S. oil production and 27 percent of its natural gas. Despite heated debate over drilling off California, Florida, Alaska, and North Carolina, 93 percent of all present offshore production takes place in the gulf." He found that many of those expensive rigs are run by disciplined crews who produce lucrative returns for investors.

Helvarg has meticulously and colorfully described how the oil industry was created in North America, and included a brief review of the movie industry and the media impact it produced. For example, he cited the 1953 film "Thunder Bay" starring Jimmy Stewart as an oil geologist confronting suspicious shrimp fishermen in Louisiana's bayou. As Helvarg put it, the film reflects the dominant view of the time when progress and industry were thought to be synonymous, while today, an oil gusher would be viewed as an ecological disaster.

Key Largo, off Southern Florida, epitomizes another dilemma. In Helvarg's words, "Branching corals that once grew here remain only as skeletal sticks in bleached rubble fields. Many of the abundant rock corals are being eaten away by diseases that have spread in an epidemic wave throughout the Florida Keys. The names of the diseases tell the story: black band, white band, white plague, and aspergillus, a fungus normally found in terrestrial soil that can shred fan corals like moths shred Irish lace."

Through interviews and an exhaustive search for truth, Helvarg has broken new ground. He has managed to explain in a clear and straightforward writing style such issues as beach closings, oil spills, collapsing fish stocks, killer algae, pollution, reckless development, and the failure of the U.S. government to protect what may be its final frontier - the Blue Frontier.

Most importantly, he has found reason to remain optimistic. Consider his closing remarks: "Our oceans remain full of strange wonders and grand experiences that will thrill generations yet unborn. Despite all the problems and challenges we face fighting for America's living seas, that is still enough to give one hope. After all, it is not every great nation, forged by its earliest frontier experiences, that gets a second chance."

(David Liscio is the environmental reporter for The Daily Item newspaper in Lynn, MA, an ecology professor at Endicott College in Beverly, MA, and the Massachusetts correspondent to the Society of Environmental Journalists.