The Best New Ocean Books To Read In 2025

A magisterial cultural history of the Atlantic Ocean before Columbus, ranging from the early shaping of the continents and the emergence of homo sapiens to the story of shipbuilding, navigation, maritime exploration, slavery, and nascent European imperialism. A dazzling and ambitious history of the pre-Columbian Atlantic seas, Ocean is a story that begins with the formation of the mid-Atlantic ridge some 200 million years ago and ends with the Castilian conquest of the Canary Islands in the fifteenth century, providing a template for the methods used by the Spanish in their colonization of the New World.

John Haywood eloquently argues that the perception of Atlantic history beginning with the first voyage of the celebrated Genoese navigator Christopher Columbus is a mistaken one, and that the seafaring and shipbuilding skills that enabled European global exploration and expansion did not arrive fully formed in the fifteenth century, but instead were learned over centuries and millennia in the Atlantic and its peripheral seas. The pre-Columbian history of the Atlantic is the story of how Europeans learned to master the oceans. This story is, therefore, key to understanding why it was Europeans, and not any of the world's other seafaring peoples, who “discovered” the world. Informed by the author's extensive travels around the Atlantic Ocean, crossing Newfoundland's Grand Banks, the Sea of Darkness, and the weed-covered Sargasso Sea, and populated by a heterogeneous and multiethnic cast of seafarers, fishermen, monks, merchants, and dreamers, Ocean is an in-depth history of a neglected subject, fusing geology, geography, mythology, developing maritime technologies, and the early history of exploration to narrate an enthralling story—one which lies at the very heart of Europe's modern history and its relationship with the rest of the world.

In this “essential guide to the half of our blue planet we call the high seas” (Will McCallum, author of How to Give Up Plastic), one of the world’s leading voices on the issue tracks the race to exploit and protect our last frontier. Two thirds of the world’s oceans lie beyond national borders. Owned by all nations and no nation simultaneously, the high seas are home to some of the richest and most biodiverse environments on the planet. But they are also home to exploitation on a scale that few of us have imagined.

Here, out of sight and out of mind, industry and economic progress rule and lax enforcement and apathy are the status quo, underscored by a battle to control, profit from, protect, or obliterate the world’s largest, wildest commons. In this book, Heffernan uncovers the truth behind deeply exploitative fishing practices, investigates the potentially devastating impact of deep-sea mining, and holds to task the Silicon Valley interventionists whose solutions to climate change are often wildly optimistic, radically irresponsible, or both. This is a powerful and deeply researched manifesto calling for the protection and preservation of this final frontier.

A collection of remarkable stories from the founders of charity Ocean Culture Life. Explore Earth’s most remote open oceans, with telling insights from the extraordinary heroes making new discoveries every day. The Ocean Speaks brings together more than 45 ocean culture life enthusiasts who have taken ocean protection into their own hands, documenting the unknown and telling stories that aim to connect humans with water.

Whether they are divers, marine biologists, surfers, influencers, conservationists, photojournalists, or filmmakers, each of these ocean lovers is playing a part in deepening our understanding of our planet’s largest life support system, 80% of which remains unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored. Split geographically by oceans and continents, the stories include a project that documents the world’s largest population of tiger sharks in the Maldives, divers who unofficially patrol a UNESCO world heritage site near the volcanic ‘Ring of Fire’ in the Tropical Eastern Pacific, a visit to the touching but ghostly turtle cemetery in Malaysia, and incredible natural spectacles like the mass spawning of grouper in French Polynesia, or the humpback whales who flock to the remote Silver Bank in the Dominican Republic to birth and mate. With over 200 underwater images from every ocean on the globe, The Ocean Speaks is a stunning celebration of ocean life, a unique glimpse into the biggest habitat on the planet, and marks a small point on the journey towards protecting it. This inspiring collection of testimonies is a must for anyone concerned about our waters, and those wanting to protect our environment. The battle to protect the deep blue is ongoing, but stories like these are taking us in the right direction. Ocean Culture Life is a charity dedicated to promoting the conservation, protection, and improvement of the physical and natural marine environment, by widening and deepening public understanding of the ocean's issues and challenges.