Author(s): Kennedy Warne

Memoirs | Science And Nature

For the past 40 years, Kennedy Warne, one of New Zealand's best-known nature writers and commentators, has been exploring the underwater world. His love of the ocean began as a small boy sailing and fishing with this father on the Hauraki Gulf and was further strengthened by a degree in marine biology. This beautifully written collection draws the reader into 'this shimmering world', beginning with Warne and his father sailing Marline, the boat built by his grandfather, from the Bay of Islands to Auckland. His later adventures writing for National Geographic fill the book with wondrous tales of the otherness of life in the sea; the Natal sardine run, 'the greatest shoal on Earth'; Tuvalu's wandering reef islands; and floating with ragged-tooth sharks off the coast of South Africa. Warne has always felt welcomed by the sea and wants to impart that same sense of belonging to the reader. Yes, the oceans as we know them are under threat, but as he travels the waters around New Zealand and the world, Warne discovers a lot to be positive about too. Connection and custodianship are the essential elements that will allow us to restore our relationship with our ancestral seas.