Most of the world's population lives on or near the coasts. Every nation not completely landlocked has used the sea as its supposedly self-cleansing garbage dump. Now the effects are being felt. There is not a coast in the world which is not dangerously polluted. Sewage, oil, plastics, industrial effluents, radioactive waste have been added to ungoverned development, all of which are busily destroying otherwise robust inshore eco-systems. Hinrichsen, basing his work on United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) research and his own extensive travels, has described the situation in the Mediterranean, the Gulf, the Indian Ocean, the South-East Asian Seas and the Eastern Pacific. He covers both the disasters and the growing successes in dealing with them, and he points the way to the sort of international deal needed to rescue a vast resource in danger of complete destruction. His book is both a call to action and a sign of hope. Originally published in 1990

Oceans drive the world's climate, nurture marine ecosystems full of aquatic life, and provide shipping lanes that have defined the global economy for centuries. And few realize that half of the world's population lives in a coastal region within easy reach of one. Yet human activities such as commercial fishing, coastal real estate development, and industrial pollution have taken their toll on the seas. The first book of its kind, "The Atlas of Coasts and Oceans "documents the fraught relationship between humans and the earth's largest bodies of water--and outlines the conservation steps needed to protect the marine environment for generations to come.
The "Atlas "offers a fascinating and often sobering account of how urbanization, climate change, offshore oil drilling, shipping routes, global tourism, and maritime conflict have had a profound impact on the world's oceans and coasts. Combining text and images in visually engaging, thematically organized map spreads, this volume addresses the ecological, environmental, and economic importance of marine phenomena such as coral reefs, eroding shorelines, hurricanes, and fish populations--and how development threatens to destroy the ultimate source of all life on the "blue planet." Lavishly illustrated with global and regional maps, from the Arabian Gulf to the Great Barrier Reef, from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, and all the other major global waterways, "The Atlas of Coasts and Oceans" will be the definitive companion to any study of its subject for years to come.