Ocean is a layman accessible, touching, sobering, and beautiful look at the world's marine environments by Sir David Attenborough and Colin Butfield. Released 6th May 2025 by Hachette on their Grand Central imprint, it's 400 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout.
The book is arranged by habitat: coral reef, deep ocean, open ocean, kelp forest, arctic, mangroves, oceanic islands & seamounts, and southern ocean. It's breathtakingly illustrated in color throughout, and the photos are detailed and gorgeous. It would be a solid coffee table/display volume on just those merits alone, but it's deeply detailed and packed with science based information about each of the ecosystems and the species which can be found there.
It is well written, but might be a bit info-dense for casual readers. For natural history fans, however, it's wonderfully compelling. The "voice" of the writing is recognizably Attenborough's and he takes readers along on a myriad of expeditions, relating personal reminiscences from his vast experiences.
The unabridged audiobook has a run time of 8 hours, 54 minutes and is narrated by the authors. The reading is relaxing to listen to, but the content is so dense in places that it would be an advantage to listen with a print copy available. It's not an academically rigorous volume; it's not exhaustively annotated, but there are numerous chapter notes and the references will provide avid readers with many more hours of learning.
Four and a half stars. It would be an excellent choice for public or secondary school library acquisition, home use, or gift giving to natural history readers.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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