SYNOPSIS:

The literature of the environmental movement is often polemic, but also often includes brilliant examples of quiet observations that have invaded our barriers of rationality and schooled resistance as persuasion, to affect a subtle shifting awareness, innovative thinking, and progressive involvement. Such texts frequently mimic the forms of Nature, meandering like a stream, aggregating like a pond or lake, and descending into the psyche as a repeating current of re-vision and re-dedication.

AQUA/TERRA unfolds as such a riverine passage, from confrontation to connection, revolution to reflection. It begins at the edge, the intersection of land and sea, flows on to examples of oceanic inter-connection, circulates in a gyre of revolutionary proposals, and ends in a pool of reflections where facets of the ocean appear in association with personal feelings and observations.

There is no didactic argument made here. Rather these brief essays and insights relate to an individual understanding of actuality and possibility, asking for reader response with the same spirit with which they are offered: the finding of an individual way, a meeting alongshore or at sea thereafter, a sharing of thoughts and aspirations to unite us in the great encompassing ocean world, world ocean, wherein we all swim together, mindful and generous and connected. AQUA/TERRA asks for one positive outcome from its reading: the transformation of each of the nouns in this thematic passage into verbs: Confront. Connect. Revolve. Reflect. In such connected, determined action lies the nascent power of a global community of Citizens of the Ocean, a force for the future as deep, wide, and dynamic as the ocean itself.

about the author:

PETER NEILL is founder and director of the World Ocean Observatory, a web-based place of exchange for information and educational services about the health of the ocean. Peter is a frequent speaker at conferences around the world related to fresh water, ocean issues, fisheries, maritime museums, sustainability, policy, and education. Throughout his career, Mr. Neill has dedicated his expertise to organizations devoted to marine affairs, education, and culture. He was President of the South Street Seaport Museum from 1985-2004; he is a past President of the Council of American Maritime Museums and the International Congress of Maritime Museums; he is a co-founder of The Sound School, New Haven, Connecticut and The Harbor School, in New York City, two innovative public high schools that use the marine environment as a context for teaching and learning.

He contributes to a number of environmental blogs and has appeared in numerous television documentaries on The History Channel, Discovery, and National Geographic Society productions. His other publications include novels (3, 2013; A Time Piece, 1970; Mock Turtle Soup, 1972; Acoma, 1978); non-fiction (Maritime America, 1988; Great Maritime Museums of the World, 1991; On a Painted Ocean, 1998); and most recently The Once and Future Ocean: Notes Toward a New Hydraulic Society (Leetes Island Books, 2016); as well as numerous anthologies and articles on maritime history and art. In 1972, he founded Leete’s Island Books, a small publishing house specializing in literary reprints, the essay, photography, and profiles of indigenous healers and practitioners of complimentary medicine around the world.

Peter is host of World Ocean Radio, a weekly broadcast of 5-minute audio episodes on ocean issues, and he is editor of World Ocean Journal, an annual magazine on ocean culture and solutions to today’s ocean issues. He lives in Sedgwick, Maine, with his partner Mary, a visual artist.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING:

Big governments, big economies, and big polluters are coming to the realization that the Blue-Green recovery is the smart choice. With the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development and the UN Decade for Ecosystem Restoration getting underway next year, we should prepare ourselves for good works ahead. Personal voices can move us to partake in those good works. Through his personal reflections and ‘oceanic feelings’, Peter Neill gives us inspiration through this collection of ocean essays.
— PETER THOMSON, UN Special Envoy for the Ocean

The planet on which we live, if honestly named, would be Ocean, not Earth. And, as our world warms, there is going to be more sea all the time. These fascinating reflections on that reality could steer us to live more easily on our fraught and tense globe.
— BILL McKIBBEN, AUTHOR, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

With an obvious passion for all things ocean, Peter Neill takes us on an informative, entertaining and inspirational journey through time and space, history and Nature. Aqua/Terra is without question one of the most thought-provoking and motivating books about the ocean I have read.
— WENDY M. WATSON-WRIGHT, PhD, Former Executive Secretary IOC-UNESCO; Ocean Frontier Institute

True to his title, Peter Neill gives us a new, universal vocabulary for understanding our complex relationship with the waters of the world. Aqua-Terra is indispensable reading for anyone seeking to refine their cultural, environmental, personal, or economic bonds with the world ocean.
— LINCOLN PAINE, AUTHOR, The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World

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