Mother, Mother, Ocean…

I really miss the ocean.

In fact, as much as I love my home country when I sometimes seriously consider moving to another land to enjoy the remainder of my life it has nothing to do with any lack of love for my homeland… it’s about quality of life including being able to afford living next to the seaside on a retirement income. You can still do that some places.

I grew up by and on the ocean.

From childhood I was fishing with my dad in the Gulf Stream and from the age of twelve I was a certified scuba diver.

Dad and I used to dive two tanks every week and fish while we were decompressing between dives and when we did kill a fish, we ate that fish gratefully and respectfully.

In fact about twice a year dad and I would stay in a beach house on Green Turtle Cay for a week at a time and we ate almost exclusively what we caught in fish, lobster, crabs, and conch. We drank collected rainwater and brought very little food from the states with us. It was a grand adventure for an adolescent kid.

But in those days the fish were abundant and the coral reefs were healthy. You could harvest a grouper or snapper because they were everywhere. We collected only what we needed to eat and always adhered to legal harvesting regulations.

A Healthy Living Coral Reef Community... Like I knew in my youth.

Now, I can’t bear returning to the places we loved because the coral reefs are gone… bleached, dead, rubble with very little life around the ruins.

Dead and Bleached Coral - a once living community decimated by human accelerated climate change and it's impact on the temperature and chemistry of our oceans.

My dad loved the ocean so much that it was an extension of his soul… and I feel the same way. We used to call him “The Captain.” When he died I picked up my guitar which he taught me to play and I sang the Jimmy Buffet song, “The Captain and the Kid.” Then I put my guitar away for three years. The music was as gone for me as those bleached dead coral reefs.

I wrote the third book in my Lyons Press “Casting Series” in honor of my father and the ocean, shores, and ocean life he and I loved so dearly.

This is not merely a fishing book as much as an adventurous journey from Alaska to California to the Gulf of MEXICO to the Caribbean and up from Florida to New York. Along the way we meet good people , eat amazing food, experience various cultures, and come in contact with beautiful fish and other wildlife .

In this book I wanted to share with everyone how magnificent our oceans, estuaries, and coastal rivers truly are and how imperiled the fish, birds, crustaceans, mollusks, and fauna truly are.

We love what we know and save what we love.

I want to help more of us to know and love our oceans and seashores and the creatures that depend upon them.

If you haven’t read Casting Seaward yet… you should.

It’s so much more than a collection of fishing tales.