Life on the Rocks

January 31, 2022
Ocean scientist Berwald (Spineless) blends memoir and science writing in this colorful look at the state of coral reefs. She writes of how, while diving, she was mesmerized by the reefs she encountered, imagining that “the sea gods and goddesses had conspired to mastermind a magnificent playground and then outfitted it in extraordinary décor.” She soon began researching how reefs have been “assaulted by a host of environmental stresses,” and met scientists, researchers, philanthropists, and filmmakers working diligently to restore them. She visits a conference in Florida, where a project to manipulate the climate over reefs via cooling or shading is pitched; visits a reef-restoration site in Sulawesi, Indonesia; and tours marine protected areas in the Dominican Republic. Along the way, Berwald weaves in stories of her daughter’s anxiety and OCD and her own struggles with parenting: “I found that it was impossible to contemplate the sickness on the reef without also considering the growing sickness in another of my loves, this one in my own home.” Indeed, she is reminded of her daughter through much of her research on reefs, making for moving dual story lines about health, healing, and hope. Nature-minded readers will find much to enjoy.

February 1, 2022
A study of coral reefs and the environmental changes they face. Science journalist Berwald, the author of a book about jellyfish, Spineless, brings a doctorate in ocean science and keen curiosity to an energetic investigation of the plight of coral reefs, threatened by warming waters, overfishing, and pollution. "The fairyland" of coral reefs, she writes, "was the accumulated work over the eons of hundreds of thousands of tiny animals--most no bigger than the tip of a pencil--and the symbiotic algae that lived tattooed in their tissue." Now coral reefs struggle to survive, a challenge the author observed firsthand in her research with scientists in Florida, Sulawesi, Bali, and the Dominican Republic; visits to a coral genetics laboratory at the University of Texas; attendance at meetings, such as the 2018 Reef Futures conference; and discussions with aquarists, climate scientists, geneticists, biologists, and environmentalists, among many others focused on promoting the health of an estimated 2,400 coral species. While she clearly explains the causes of the coral reefs' vulnerability, she also finds evidence of hope. By the process of reticulated evolution, for example, coral species can interbreed, producing hybrids able to survive in warmer waters. Public and private efforts are ongoing. For example, by 2021, a huge restoration project in Sulawesi, funded by the Mars corporation (manufacturer of candy bars, among other products), had planted over 280,000 corals in nearly 10 acres, "making it one of the largest restoration projects in the world, if not the largest." The Coral Restoration Foundation, founded in 2007, promotes growing coral in labs and returning them to reefs. Besides presenting ecological concerns, Berwald underscores the devastating impact of coral demise on communities of color that depend on the health of the oceans for their economic survival. Along with sharply drawn profiles and lucid renderings of ocean life, the author interweaves her narrative with a memoir of family trauma: her teenage daughter's overwhelming anxiety and OCD, whose causes seem as complex as the forces that assault coral reefs. An animated narrative that conveys a timely message.

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March 1, 2022

Marine biologist and science writer Berwald (Spineless: The Science of Jellyfish and the Art of Growing a Backbone) shares her love for oceans in this book exploring the fate of coral reefs in a warming climate. Berwald explains that coral has a symbiotic relationship with algae, which, through photosynthesis, supplies the coral with most of its sugar for energy, while coral protects the algae within its tissues. The warming oceans have led to extensive coral bleaching, leaving behind dead zones where the coral once protected other sea life. Berwald travels around the world, dives to study the reefs, and interviews the scientists who are leading valiant efforts to save coral reefs in Indonesia (including Sulawesi and Bali), the Dominican Republic, Australia, and Florida, as well as in her own backyard of Galveston, TX. These efforts include coral nurseries (where baby corals are nurtured before being planted on scaffolding in the ocean) and seeding clouds with sea spray to brighten them and reflect heat away from the reefs. Entwined with the story of saving coral is Berwald's engrossing personal history, which includes her daughter's battle with mental illness. VERDICT A good option for readers interested in climate change and marine biology.--Caren Nichter

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 1, 2022
The increasing threat against the world's reefs has been in the news a great deal, especially since revelations about the devastating bleaching of coral at the Great Barrier Reef. Science writer Berwald (Spineless, 2017) has conducted an excellent study of efforts to save the reefs, talking to a plethora of scientists around the world over the past few years. Attending conferences and traveling to reefs near Key West, Bali, and Indonesia, she writes of out-of-the-box geoengineering projects, aquarium aficionados, and intriguing studies of reef evolution. This is a long game in terms of results, she stresses, that nevertheless must be approached at the fastest of speeds. In an intriguing authorial choice, she shares the family crisis that unfolds while she researches the coral, writing of her teenage daughter's increasingly fraught battle with debilitating anxiety and OCD. In both cases, the potential for error is high, and no easy cure is available. Berwald's concern for her daughter and growing awareness of the intricacy surrounding the fight to save the reefs make for a compulsive reading experience. Solidly researched, sharply observed, and compassionately rendered, the parallel struggles in Life on the Rocks make for science writing that is illuminating on several levels.

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