Author(s): Kennedy Warne

Nature | Aquatic Life | Aotearoa New Zealand Non-Fiction | 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards long lists

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.

Contents: Author's note / 9 Introduction: The sounding of the whale / 13 A life aquatic / 19 A tale of two oceans / 40 Beneath Arabian seas / 66 The inland sea / 85 Among sharks / 107 Under the ice / 127 Grasping the blade / 146 Song of rising isles / 165 Cry, the beloved ocean / 185 Connection and protection / 205 An ethic for the sea / 222 Further reading / 236 About the author / 238

Author Biography: Kennedy Warne, co-founder of New Zealand Geographic magazine and contributor to National Geographic, often writes about the sea, including the book Let Them Eat Shrimp: The Tragic Disappearance of the Rainforests of the Sea. His most recent books, however, are land-based: Tuhoe: Portrait of a Nation and View From the Road, a collaboration with photographer Arno Gasteiger. He has also produced two children's books with Northland illustrator Heather Hunt: Cuckoo and the Warbler and It's My Egg (and you can't have it!). Once a fortnight Warne speaks about the outdoors, nature and adventure on RNZ's morning programme, Nine to Noon, in a slot entitled 'Off the Beaten Track'