Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

If you can accept this book as just a set of investigative travelogue-type stories that don't necessarily cover the "whole ocean" (so to speak) of viewpoints and important subjects, then it's an interesting read. But the author approaches most of the stories from just one side of the issues involved, and completely ignores one of the biggest ocean-related issues out there. The book starts from a very interesting place: Most of the Earth's surface is covered by oceans not land, but while every bit of that land is part of one country or another, and is administered by internationally-recognized governments, the vast oceans really don't "belong" to any country, and the administration of them (e.g. laws) is unclear or non-existent. This gives a lot of scope for investigation and reporting on a subject that has had little or no coverage, and thus makes for an interesting subject area. The author is a reporter for the NY Times, and this book apparently consists of (or is derived from) articles that he has written for that publication over the past few years. Thus the subtitle of "Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier." Among the chapters are several accounts of the author's hair-raising foreign travels and encounters with various foreign government "officials", often in places where the words "good" and "government" don't go together, mainly in SE Asia and Africa. So as a travelogue, I found the book to be an entertaining read. But my enjoyment was tempered to an increasing degree by several things: - Much of the author's investigations focus on illegal fishing and on human rights abuses on many (most?) of the SE Asian fishing boats. These are both big problems for sure, but over and over we find the author riding on boats from Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd and similar organizations, which immediately illustrates a bias in my opinion. Especially when he reports about the vigilante tactics used by these organizations, some of which happened before his very eyes and were reported by him in this book, but he gives those tactics his tacit approval, apparently because he thinks they are OK because nobody else is doing anything about some of these issues. This is wrong. - Although the author has traveled widely and extensively to a lot of exotic and dangerous locales, he still seems amazed at finding corruption and other behavior that don't conform to his (and most others in the Western world) ethical standards. Apparently he's never lived in a non-Western culture (as I have), and thus expects everyone in the world to conform to our customs and norms. I'm not condoning corruption in any form, but not every culture agrees on exactly what is right or wrong or somewhere in between, and I can tell you for sure that if you were born into and had to live in much of Africa or SE Asia, one might not always see things the same way as a reporter from NY and DC sees it. The only solution the author hints at seems to be more action by the UN or other "world" organization. - I can accept diverse viewpoints such as the ones I mention above, but where the author TOTALLY lost me was in how he completely ignores China's maritime activities and illegal claims. In the chapter titled "Fluid Borders", he witnesses a maritime encounter between government ships from Indonesia and Vietnam over ocean territory that is claimed by both countries, and uses it to illustrate that the while country borders are pretty clear on land, there is a lot of disagreement over who "owns" pieces of ocean that are offshore of any given country. The author puts a lot of focus on Indonesia and Vietnam, but just briefly mentions China, saying "while it's easy to portray China as the villain in this jockeying for control, the truth is that other countries, including Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines, are engaged in the same geopolitical scramble to expand their territorial claims in the South China Sea." REALLY??? Has the author never hear of China's infamous "Nine Dash Line" and how they are using it to claim virtually all of the South China Sea, right up to the shores of the countries he names? This is not a "truth" at all. Shame on the author for condoning China's arrogant and dangerous claims. And why didn't he investigate any of the island-building that China is doing there, to the detriment of the environment (which the author otherwise is very protective of)? Perhaps he's afraid of China? This last item in particular causes me to call into question the objectivity of the author, and unfortunately turned what might have been a most interesting book into merely an incomplete and somewhat biased travelogue. Too bad.