Our last resource and sink

Press, 21 August 1976, Page 15

Our last resource and sink

The Life-giving Sea. By David Bellamy. Hamish Hamilton. 320 pp. Index, illustrations, bibliography. N.Z. price $13.90. (Reviewed by Robin Smith) David Bellamy is well-known to British television viewers for his several highly successful nature series. His book is written in the same easy flowing style which accepts the importance of scientific accuracy and the necessity of classification, but which does not burden an untrained reader with more mumbo-jumbo than is necessary for basic understanding. It is a book on ecology. The oceans are the world’s final resource, and also the world’s final sink. The effluent and polluted wastes we get rid of daily end up in the sea What we need to learn is how to preserve the interaction of resources in the sea. This leads to a view of evolution which instead of saying that to survive we must dominate, a natural corollary from Darwin’s theory, says that to survive we must learn to be interdependent with all other forms of life. To be able to do this properly we must first understand other forms of life and how they survive.

Going step by step through the evolutionary tree, Mr Ballamy, traces the course of evolution through the

surviving species of sea life, beginning at simple life cells, and progressing through sponges, jellyfish, worms, snails, crabs and spiders. The direct route to man comes by way of chordates which forged their own branch after worms. After the chordates (sea urchins, sea stars) come the familiar vertebrates, fish, frogs, reptiles, birds and mammals. It is through understanding the complex variety of life in the sea and the way in which survival has been maintained among these creatures for so many millions of years, that Mr Bellamy says we can learn how to preserve all life, including our own. The last part of the book looks at some systems of life, in particular parts of the oceans, and considers ways of managing the earth’s resources for the benefit not only of man but of all life Mr Bellamy says it is his aim to present sufficient information to allow the reader to “think" ecology. This comes from an undeistanding of the variety of the forms of life and their natural interdependence. The book is based on the most simple, yet least understood fact of life: that man is just one of hundreds of life forms. His survival does not depend on him being the fittest; it might depend on him being the wisest.