All posts in Featured Books

If you are an American, you know who Smokey the Bear is. He’s the bear in the ranger hat who has been adamantly spreading the same message for 70+ years: “Only YOU can prevent forest fires” — and he’s been pretty successful.

“A feast of beauty and a source of wonder” was the phrase used by Sacheverell Sitwell, Handasyde Buchanan, and James Fisher to describe the images in ornithologist and artist John Gould’s A monograph of the Trochilidæ, or family of humming-birds.* It seems there are few who would disagree with this statement, as a five volume set plus supplement sold at Christie’s Auction House in 2011 for $217,845.

Deep sea dredging, as a means of scientific discovery, was popularized after the Challenger Expedition (1872-1876) came back to port in Spithead, Hampshire in the United Kingdom. In four years, the scientifically outfitted steamboat had circumnavigated the globe, traveled a total distance of 68,890 nautical miles, and along the way had picked-up 4,700+ previously unobserved and unnamed species.

Did you know that every second breath you take, you owe to the ocean? Yes, it’s true: the ocean produces more than half of the planet’s oxygen supply which accounts for one out of every two human breaths. More specifically, we owe gratitude to microscopic phytoplankton. These varieties of algae are atrophic organisms, able to produce their own food via photosynthesis. Oxygen is a major by-product of this fascinating process that transforms sunlight into food therefore, algae underpins ALL earth’s ecosystems and life on earth.