Book Review: The Deep Range/Clarke (1957)

This is the future world under the ocean I was promised when I was a kid. Whales herded by minisubs like cattle on the trail north from Texas, plankton gathered by harvesting ships to feed the billions, and fish being managed inside areas enclosed by ultrasonic or bubble barriers. With TV specials by Jacques Cousteau, news stories about Cousteau's Conshelf and diving saucer and the Navy's SeaLab experiments, and TV's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, it wasn't hard to mentally embellish even Clarke's well-realized description with cities under the sea to house the descendants of Captain Nemo and two mini-submarines in every garage.

I've read this inspiring book several times since I was a kid. There are three sections with former astronaut Walter Franklin introduced to his new job as a warden in the first section, in the second he is operating as a warden a few years down the line while trying to find the great sea serpent on the side, and in the final section, he has becomes director of the department that manages whales and must deal with a threat to his way of life.

The first part of the book always struck me as the best, introducing all the wonders that Clarke visualized for his undersea kingdom, much of it the result of management of ocean resource meant to help feed the world's population.

I suppose what's lacking in actuality is Clarke's fictional unified world government and a single policy and organization to produce food. Without it, everyone is cutting each other's throat like Jack the Ripper on drunken Saturday night.

Instead, we have the Exxon Valdez, coral reefs blasted by dynamiters for tropical fish, more fishing vessels than ever threatening to overfish the world's fish stocks (whalers of the 1800's were successful with a few animals; nowadays, factory ships need dozens of cetaceans to make their trip profitable), dolphins still getting caught up in miles-long plastic fishing nets (though not as bad as before the "dolphin safe" tuna days), and that's just the tip of the iceberg. A symptom of today's world.

Clarke's book -- a product after all of the 1950's when this was just a dream-- makes it seem so much simpler. Nevertheless, it does offer some suggestions for the future that might still work, provided someone comes up with the investment. That's the secret, of course. Follow the money.

The Japanese are known to take the long view. I wonder if they'll turn to managing the total ocean harvest as Clarke describes or adapt it by, for example, sealing off the exits from a coral atoll with bubble curtains and rearing fish inside. Of course, we already have extensive fish farming using freshwater fish. Maybe there's a future for Clarke's vision provided we don't destroy the oceans first.