Interview with Tessa Hill and Eric Simons authors of At Every Depth

For this conversation, I am joined by Tessa Hill, a UC Davis professor, and Eric Simons, a writer and educator, to discuss their co-authored book, At Every Depth, that intertwines indigenous knowledge with Western science to highlight the urgency of ocean conservation amidst climate change. The book emerges from a collaborative writing process, structured to reflect varying depths of ocean familiarity, aiming to bridge the disconnect many feel towards ocean issues. 

At Every Depth emphasizes the interconnectedness of marine ecosystems through relatable human stories, making complex changes in ocean environments more accessible and tangible. Additionally, the authors spotlight the vital role of indigenous perspectives in understanding these ecosystems, advocating for a richer dialogue around ocean conservation. Inspired by pioneers like Rachel Carson and the work of historical figures such as Marie Tharp, the authors assert that it’s not too late to protect the ocean, urging communities to unite in conservation efforts and share knowledge for a sustainable future. More resources and event updates can be found at their website, ateverydepth.com.

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Tripp: This show was recorded in Narrm, Melbourne, Australia, where the traditional custodians include the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, and we pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. 

Tripp: I'm Tripp Collins, and this is Book Science, the podcast that explores how the best science books are written and why they matter. 

Tripp: Today we are talking to Tessa Hill, a professor at UC Davis, who has taught classes on oceanography and climate change for over a decade, and Eric Simons, a writer and educator. He was formerly a digital editor at Bay Nature and author of two other books, including The Secret Lies of Sports Fans and Darwin Slept Here. Together they wrote At Every Depth, Our Growing Knowledge of the Changing Oceans. 

Tripp: This is an excellent book. It blends indigenous knowledge and western science in the service of building a connection to the ocean environment, in the hopes that that connection will inspire us to protect it. I hope you enjoy our conversation. 

Tripp: For me, the book was about change in the oceans, but what was just as interesting as the topic of the book was sort of the choices you made and how you told the stories. I pulled this one quote from the book, which I took as one of your guiding principles, and it's, the ocean cannot tell its own story, so the story we tell about it depends on the people who get to speak. And it was clear to me that this book was just as much a conduit for other people's stories as it was like a faithful science communication. Like I said, maybe in your own words, what is this book all about? 

Eric Simons: I feel like you got it and we're done here. 

Tessa Hill: Go ahead. Okay, I'm going to take a stab at this and I will see if Eric can add in. You did such a nice job. It's amazing hearing other people respond to what they think we were trying to do with the book. It's maybe one of my favorite parts of talking to people about the book is hearing what they saw and felt as the messages. But yeah, I think the book is about so much change happening in the ocean and yet maybe a lot of people don't know about that change. And so we went directly to the source of people who could sort of be that voice for the ocean. And I think we really did see it as a conduit for their stories, more than our stories for sure. And ultimately, I think Eric and I really wanted people to feel connected to the ocean and that that human connection to the ocean goes back millennia and that maybe if we got in touch with that connection that we'd be willing to act on it a little bit. 

Eric Simons: It's hard to add to that. I think that last part is what matters so much that there are people around the world who have this close relationship with the ocean as something so tied into their lives and that it's worth understanding what they know and what they see and what they think about this place in a way to connect ourselves to it. Because it's hard sometimes to see things. 

It's hard to notice what's happening under the surface. But there are people who are doing that. There are people who have done that for millennia and it's worth sort of hearing their stories as a way to understand the change that we see. 

Tripp: Yeah, absolutely. And that was one of my takeaways was sort of listening to stories from people who live like these ocean-centric lives because the average person, the ocean is sort of a mysterious place and so we can tap into these people that have feelings for the ocean and some of that will rub off on us. And I think those are some of the themes we're going to return to but before we get to that maybe could you guys talk a little bit about the inception of the book? How did this all start for you guys? 

Eric Simons: It is tying into that theme that that theme was there from the beginning of change and how do you describe and communicate change? And I think so I was working as a science journalist. Tessa obviously is a practicing research scientist and I think both of us were in our different ways seen like really, really dramatic changes. We were both in California. 

This started probably around 2013. We weren't thinking about a book yet. We were working together but both of us were looking out the window in 2013, 2014, 2015 while there was this really, really dramatic change up the coast of California. Marine heat wave, this pattern that became known as the blob off really entire west coast of North America and El Niño, a lot of things happening in the ocean and for me going and looking for explanation, I think for Tessa researching and looking at this and for both of us trying to first of all wrap your minds around what was happening and then for me at least when I realized what was happening, when I was going to these conferences and seeing the scientists put the big sign up saying we're off the map, trying to say, okay, well who knows this because this feels like a big deal and trying to find different ways to tell that story and to find other people who were seeing this and what they were thinking about and then sort of going around asking, do you see what's happening? 

What do you make of this? And Tessa and I connected because I think both of us were asking that question as well as what's going on question but we both were also interested in other people who were seeing the same thing and thinking about it and Tessa maybe you can take over there. You were researching this, seeing the same stuff. What were you seeing at the beginning? 

Tessa Hill: Yeah, I mean I think one of the themes that shows up in the book and I actually think we even use this language somewhere in there is that there's so much change happening in the ocean but when I go to, I do a lot of public speaking about climate change and when I go to an auditorium on land and I ask people how they're experiencing climate change, people can very easily tell me about the recent storm that was very extreme or wildfires or hurricanes that seem more extreme than they used to or tides coming in and swamping coastal areas or a particularly hot, dry summer. People can get in touch with all of those things very easily but then when I say to them, do you realize that that scale of environmental and ecosystem change is also happening below the ocean? It's very, very hard for people to imagine because we look out over the ocean and we just see this vast blue apparently unchanging expanse and so I think we, Eric and I shared this goal from the beginning of how do we pull back that blue curtain? How do we show people that the drought that's happening on land, the heat wave that's happening on land, it's happening in the ocean too and it's having the same ecological and environmental impacts that we experience in our backyards. So yeah, I think it started with this sort of shared goal around storytelling around the ocean and around bringing those ecological impacts that seemed far away and distant closer to people and we can tell you more about this but I also think it was really, we managed to interview a lot of people who were very willing to be very honest and vulnerable with us which was a very, it was a gift frankly like the book is what it is because of all the people in it and there were some circumstances I think that led to people being willing to do that with us. 

Tripp: Yeah and I think I heard in a previous interview with you guys that that was one of the, maybe the benefits of doing a long form project like this was give you the space and opportunity to get, know people to build trust. I guess a book is sort of like a uniquely challenging and rewarding form these days when you can communicate science in so many different ways. Why did you guys go with a book? 

Eric Simons: I remember talking to another journalist about this once and she had a thesis that we all sort of have different attention spans and that just I have like a five-year attention span. I mean this book like maybe exceeded it slightly it ended up being more like six or seven but but that I just I for whatever reason think in books that that is sort of I like the level you get. I mean this is like doing multiple PhDs or something you spend four or five years just doing something all the time but then you get your PhD and you stop and you do something else. 

I like that. It's a way to learn a lot and it holds my attention for a long time and then I like telling a story slowly with a lot of different parts and I like the challenge of finding where all the parts fit and thinking about everything together and I mean this one was fun like I hadn't co-written a book before but it's that's a neat process and oddly like you mentioned you can communicate in all these different ways like Tessa and I communicated all the time electronically on Slack and wrote a separate book just in Slack messages that then fed into this one. It was a neat project. 

Tripp: Yeah, these days when everyone's thinking about AI you know AI I'm sure can write a really excellent tweet but there's I mean there's no replacement for a book of this like depth and breadth right like there's just no way. 

Tessa Hill: I'm glad you feel that way. I just wanted to add in so I mean Eric has written multiple books so I think the answer for him is that he thinks in books but I have not written multiple books as my first book and I think I you know I'm just at a place where I'm willing to try anything. I you know I have spent 20 years studying how climate change is impacting the ocean and I've you know you asked me the science communication method and I've done it. I mean I have tried I've done blogs I've done a lot of public speaking I've done a lot of science policy integration I love all of that but I'm also the book felt to me like okay this is going to be a new way to reach different people in a different way and to start conversations about things differently and I'm actually very pleased with the way that part has turned out. It has really opened up new conversations for me with people about the ocean and what the ocean means to them. 

Tripp: Yeah that's awesome it's a huge investment right but it sounds like you get that return on the investment in the end. For sure. You mentioned about co-writing so that's a very interesting to me at least part of this because for me writing is very lonely the process but I guess it's not so lonely if you get to do it with someone else but it occurred to me you know there's probably a lot of ways it can go wrong so did you guys have like outlines guidelines or how did you manage each other's expectations throughout the process? 

Tessa Hill: I mean I think there's like a philosophical answer to that question and there's also sort of a mechanistic one. I mean we did we the whole book was written in Google Docs where you know we were writing and rewriting each other's words for five or six years as Eric said to the point where for me now when I look through the book it's actually hard for me to like identify things that Eric specifically wrote or I specifically wrote because we really like merged into a single writing human. Well and but that that's sort of the mechanics right I would just say philosophically like there's so many ways that this could have gone wrong and it just really didn't and I feel very lucky about that Eric and I you know to this day still really appreciate each other a lot and I think there's a lot of mutual respect and I also think we each had moments where we were kind of like oh my gosh this is so daunting and we'll never finish and it was nice because then the other person could be like no it's okay like I have time this weekend I'll take a crack at this like it's not hopeless and so there's a nice aspect of co-writing which is that when you get really discouraged there's actually someone else to cheerlead and then a month later you know you're cheerleading and the other person feels like it's too daunting and I mean to me when I think about writing a book by myself I sort of can't imagine that aspect you know would be really missing I don't know what did I miss Eric? 

Eric Simons: No I think that captures it I think that I mean Tessa mentioned earlier being willing to try anything and I think in some ways I reached a similar point with writing with journalism and that you know for me at least I think we both probably went into this understanding and this feeds into the way we describe the book that this is a collection of other people's stories as well that that this was not mine and I think Tessa would say it was not hers this is our project together and we were not just sort of as the two of us but it was a care taking of other people's stories and that we for whatever reason I'm thinking of like the Calvin and Hobs line like if all your friends are contractual you don't have any I think we trusted each other from the start maybe you should have put more into writing than we did but but it just worked we either got lucky or or it worked out but that we both understood and trusted from the beginning that this was something different that we were trying and that it didn't belong fully to either of us and that we needed to needed to appreciate that part of it that that was that was part of what we were trying was to to make this sort of a collective work I think that that helped a lot that helped guide us through you know the writing of it and then I think it was really important that you know when one of us couldn't do things for a while the other one could and over five years you know you have two busy parents and you have a lot going on in in the world and in our lives and you know there was sort of a good back and forth 

Tripp: so I'm hearing a couple things which are kind of popping up to me and one is like bringing a sense of urgency to it I mean you guys have tried everything else and this felt like a project that needed to be done and then also a bit of selflessness in it you know you're doing it for the other people's voices so that those two elements can really be what you need the fuel you need to push a project through especially a long and difficult one for sure because I heard in a previous interview you guys wrote an article first or maybe that was the first chapter that was published as an article and then the proposal came later was that sort of a strategic move like were you thinking let me get some attention on this article see you know see where it might go is there a need for this book or were you guys starting with an article and then and then it evolved into a book later 

Eric Simons: I think it started with an article strategically but less less about the like sort of selling an acquisition of the book although I think that is a very good like if you are an aspiring book writer writing a successful magazine piece first is a good way to go about it but I think for us probably it was more we wanted to do a book but we also wanted to experiment with what is that going to look like what is the voice going to be what is it like when we write together what is it like when we interview people together so that article was a way to break off a chunk of it that we sort of had a better idea about we knew that knew that subject a little bit more we knew kind of what more of it what we wanted to say and that was a way to sort of see what does this look like when we put everything into the google doc and start messing around with it and to then get some advice from editors that we trusted this is working this is not working to sort of see you know how we constructed this you think about a book as a construction project and that was a chance to sort of build something small and see what it looked like 

Tripp: I wanted to ask a little bit about the structure the title and the structure related right to at every depth and the structure is a bit like shallow to deep which also means near shore to offshore and I think you mentioned maybe another publication that had this structure you mentioned it in your book and was that one an inspiration for this and did the structure change throughout the process or was that set early on 

Tessa Hill: it's a great question I actually can't remember it maybe Eric will remember like what inspired that structure I can tell you I mean I think we wanted it to feel kind of like a walk where you start in the near shore and you you know walk into deeper and more open ocean parts of the ocean and there's a few benefits to that structure narratively and one is that the coast is the piece that we sort of know the best as humans and so we could establish that human connection pretty firmly in the first couple chapters and very likely explore environments that maybe our readers were very familiar with or even if they hadn't been there they like love them from afar whereas when you we get into as you pointed out the like open ocean and then fuller oceans and then eventually the deep ocean those are the parts of the ocean that maybe we feel the least connected to they're also I mean like the the placement of the sort of the polar chapter and the deep ocean chapter as the very end of the book was very intentional in that you really can think of these places as sort of the wild west of the ocean today we we know relatively little about them we know enough to know that there are habitats there that are fragile and very important and yet they're aware you know our sort of the exploitation of the ocean is exactly headed to those environments so it's this the conflict between what humans are trying to do in those environments and what we know and understand is sort of the most intense in those places 

Eric Simons: I think the only thing I'd add I mean that's exactly right there was a a book that we mentioned in the title chapter called between pacific tides that was written by a biologist in Monterey, Doc [Edward Flanders Robb] Ricketts, was a friend of John Steinbeck's and so became sort of famous through Steinbeck he had written this guide for tide poolers and the first draft he turned in was it was one of the first field guides to be organized by depth chronologically where you'd you know encounter the animals as you might meet them in in the world walking into the ocean as opposed to sort of taxonomically and I always it always stuck with me that he turned this into the editor at Stanford University Press and the editor wrote back and said this doesn't seem like a particularly happy organization so I always liked that idea that that the book which makes so much sense in a field guide now or in in sort of a lot of books that it's organized by how you would actually experience the world didn't make a lot of sense to that to particular editor I don't there's a separate story about it 

Tripp: so the the chapters okay so I'm just going to read a few of the topics that were in chapter five which is abundant ocean and so in there we get information about El Niño Southern Oscillation we talk about Matthew Fontaine Murray we talk about whale populations migrating copepods hypoxia obviously it all connects in the book but they make these topics might seem a little you know disparate at first so can you talk about how you decided like how these the puzzle pieces fit together how you kept it organized like was there a blueprint or an outline or a checklist of elements you wanted in each chapter that need an inclusion I 

Eric Simons: think we were very rarely working off a checklist but we did a lot of outlining together and but I think the outlines were focused on what story do we want to tell about this place then there were this sort of series of questions that we wanted to ask in each chapter how is it changing what are the sort of major things that people are seeing in that environment now and what are the things that people have seen in that environment over time so you know we wanted to make sure that we in some way for each sort of place we describe in the book also describe the human connection to it how do people know this place what do we know about it how long have we known about it you know where where are those sources of knowledge and to weave that together into a description of the place through the eyes of different people who've seen it again you know you can ask people who are around today who spend all their time in the ocean today what they see but you can also see go back in time and and read people in the past who have described places or consider sort of other traditions of what we know about places in the past oral traditions and and different sources that will describe knowledge and the acquisition of knowledge about a place so we're sort of looking through those and thinking about what of those are out there and and putting that into an outline and then if the outline takes you through well what people are seeing there is I think 

Tessa Hill: that's a great description and I would just add that, you know, part of my amazing day job is that I teach classes to university students and I teach oceanography classes. And so I think for me in writing the book, I thought about them a lot. I thought about what what story would I want to tell in front of my classroom about this topic. And, you know, if we were talking about ocean circulation or the history of whaling or the sort of birth story of oceanography as a discipline, how would I talk about it in my classroom? 

How would I help my students connect those stories? I partly I partly did that because I can't not do it. It's like ingrained in me to be an oceanography instructor. But also I was imagining like, would my colleagues want to use this book in their classroom and what would it need? What would the book need to do to be useful for sort of general scientifically interested readers, but also readers who might be in a classroom setting? 

I think Eric and I were thinking about both those things all the time, because we wanted as broad and open of an audience as possible. And so I like to think that the book is, you know, written for someone who doesn't have a background in oceanography but is interested, but is also written in a way that students in a class could read it. And then a professor could say like, oh, go look up those three citations that are in that chapter. So there's an academic depth to it. And so I think part of what you're picking up on like the structure and the stories and the different stories intertwining was that Eric and I were very conscious of the fact that we were writing this for multiple people. 

Tripp: Yeah, absolutely. So I usually ask about sort of the balance between scientific accuracy and storytelling and writing a little later on the conversation. But I feel like that sort of dialed in on your take on it. But there was also something related to that I wanted to ask about, which is incorporating these different knowledge systems. So you talk a lot about indigenous knowledge systems, it adds a whole another layer. I was just curious, was there any time you came across something from a different knowledge system that sort of conflicted with scientific consensus at all? And how did you deal with such situations if they arose? 

Tessa Hill: I didn't feel a sense of conflict in that. And maybe I'm being naive in reporting it that way. But it was, so we never, there are some things we explicitly tell the reader about the book. And we've talked about some of them already. We never say to the reader, we are going to bring you stories from all sorts of people who know the ocean really well. And that is not limited to the scientific community. That includes coastal community members and people who work in conservation organizations and indigenous leaders, indigenous knowledge holders, and includes fishermen. And, you know, the list could go on and on. 

Farmers of the sea, those who are working in aquaculture. And we, Eric and I made a decision really early on that all of those knowledge systems were of equal value. And that the book was going to be written to reflect that. And I do think that is probably a piece that maybe some traditional scientists will be a little controversial. And I also hope that it is a little eye opening and mind opening. 

Tripp: Yeah, honestly, I guess the question was a little unfair because do you think so? Even if you're hearing on the surface, you know, different stories about the same place, they're not necessarily conflicting takes on it, right? Sure. For scientists, we need to be a little bit more curious about if something says something different, you know, we need to dig in and figure out why. 

Tessa Hill: Yeah, and there's complexity there that might actually be really interesting. 

Tripp: That's right. I kind of want to pivot back to the main one of the main themes to this theme of ocean change and how like tough it is for humans to understand it. We have like this built in terrestrial bias, right? 

Because we evolved the land. And for many, the oceans are just like impenetrable. And Simon Winchester has his quote in his book Atlantic. And this is when he's making his first crossing from the UK to American Ocean liner. He says, from here onward, the sea yonder open, wide and featureless and soon took on the character that is generally true of all great oceans being unmarked, unclaimed, largely unknowable and in very large measure unknown. And I feel like that's how most people see the ocean, right? It's just like this big blackness serious thing or, I mean, we were talking about maps earlier. So on a map, an ocean is just like a blue featureless space. Or if we're lucky, we get some topography, right? But the truth is the ocean is the thing in between. And we don't really even have a good way of representing it. When reading the book, I was thinking a lot about the difficulty of understanding and characterizing and communicating change in the ocean where we don't really have a great way of like talking about representing the ocean itself to begin with. This is so tough for us. And maybe that's why a book is a great choice is because we can sit with it for a while. 

Eric Simons: I mean, I agree with all of that, especially the map part. And you know, what's funny is even those like topography maps as we talk about in the book, like you see that underwater thing, and it looks like, oh, yeah, we've really got the seafloor map. 

And then you ask seafloor map, like even those are not very good maps. It's really, really big out there. But I think one of the things in the book that I like so much is this is, it is a very difficult place to know or maybe rephrase, it's a place that not a lot of people know really well. But there are people out there around the world who know this place extremely well, who feel this place, you're just as part of their daily life, and that they have so much understanding and so much knowledge, and they feel every single ripple of change that goes through there. 

And the part of the book project was about finding those people and having them describe what they know, because then you can understand. I mean, I think part of this is not just difficult to understand the ocean, it's difficult to understand change in the ocean, because it doesn't look like a place that changes. And so if you can understand all the little details that someone sees and feels who spends their time there in whatever context, like I mentioned, whether that's aquaculture or Indigenous knowledge holders or scientists who are out there in the field, whatever the context, if you are out there all the time, and we have multiple people say this in different contexts throughout the book, that you start to see these little details, you start to just feel the difference. You know, the color is different, the look of something is a little different, and that means something, and you know it means something, and so if we can get people to describe those, it's maybe a way to describe change in something that otherwise feels so impossibly huge. But I don't know, Tessa, like what would you say there, you know, in terms of communicating that, the detail, how do we do that? 

Tessa Hill: No, I thought that was beautifully said. I think, you know, it just reminded me that one of the very first people that we interview for the first chapter, one of the things that she said to us was that being witness to all this change, it's an act of bravery. Because any of the people in the book could have turned away, they could have decided to go do something else where they weren't faced with this every day, but they choose not to, they choose not to or they need not to for livelihood reasons, and so they're out there, they're seeing all this change, and a lot of people in the book are working extremely hard to convey what that means, what we're losing, what we have to fight for, and I just, I walked away from, you know, when I reflect back on all those interviews, that's what I think about. I think about how brave all these folks are for not turning away from the change. 

Tripp: Yeah, and the other thing that you guys talk about, I think towards the end of the book is, yeah, these things are difficult to get a good handle on, but we don't need to have a perfect understanding of the ocean to know that it's changing and that we need to do something about it. The story about kelp was sort of interesting to me, begun the conversation with the marine heat waves and the blob, so kelp is sort of under threat from marine heat waves, and then you have this quote from the Washington Post that says, the tragedy playing out underwater is much worse but invisible to most. 

That's one of the ones, there's so many quotes like that in the book, but it just kind of hits on how difficult it is to communicate like what's going on in the ocean, but so you describe how the ecosystem works. Once the kelp dies off, the sea urchins move in and they prevent the kelp from re-establishing, but if the urchins were kept in check by sea otters and the kelp has a fighting chance, but of course the humans decimated sea otters in the fur hunting in the 18th and 19th centuries, so it's just like, it's just a reminder, you know, we're talking about interconnected ecosystems and nothing out there happens in isolation. 

Tessa Hill: One of the things I like about that chapter is that it's centered in multiple different places around the world, which I think makes it sort of more compelling, but one of those places is of course the California coast, which is the ecosystem that you just described with the otters and the kelp and the urchins, and you know, I do a lot of like public tours and things like that at my university and we often, people often ask me, you know, so what is happening with the kelp and the urchins? 

And it's one of my favorite questions because you land exactly where, what you just said, like it's a perfect example of how all of our decisions are interconnected and that, you know, managing these ecosystems that are essentially our forests. And so, you know, we're talking about the sea, they're incredibly biodiverse, there's tons of animals that are living on and within that kelp. You know, some of them are things that we really like to eat. Some of them are things that we really just love to watch like sea otters. 

Some of them are, you know, like secret and stealthy ocean predators like sea stars, which are also very important in that system. And if we try to simplify the problems down to just one thing or one event, it immediately falls apart, right? Because actually what's happening is that all of these organisms are working together in an ecosystem and they're sort of this domino effect when that system gets out of balance. So I think it's a nice, it provides a nice example of how challenging it is actually to make smart and sustainable decisions about the ocean because we actually have to be thinking, you know, three or four dominoes down, not just one effect. 

Tripp: What you guys were saying about tackling the problem by introducing human stories and centered around indigenous peoples, there's a great section in one of the chapters about the people of Oceania. And at one point you talked about how westerners tend to draw lines on maps at the edge of the sea and it sort of emphasizes our separation from the seas. But indigenous, some indigenous people consider seas as part of their country. And you have this quote from a leader who once said, give me the sea, that's my country. I love that. 

And, you know, many of these indigenous groups live very closely with the sea and I think, like you said, taking their perspective is one way of understanding how change is happening in the oceans. This brings me to Adam Dick. This was one of the more, like, much fascinating people I had never heard of before reading the book and you've referred to him as a time capsule. Maybe could you just tell me a bit about his story? 

Eric Simons: I mean, so this is an indigenous leader on the north coast of British Columbia was raised in a time when Canada is suppressing almost all First Nations people. There's residential boarding schools. They're interrupting public ceremonies. 

They're basically widespread attempts to, you know, eliminate indigenous culture. He grows up in that time and his parents and grandparents make this decision to train him in the ways that they had known to keep him safe from the patrol boats that we're looking to send him to a boarding school, to a residential school. And he acquires all this information and goes off and becomes a commercial fisherman. And here is this commercial fisherman out in, I think it was Vancouver Island, and just with as exquisite a knowledge of the ocean and the natural world as any human alive. And at the same time, there are all these sort of Western scientists running around attempting to describe things that are in Adam Dick's head. 

He just knows them. And I think that there was a little bit of a point there about sort of you'd ask about conflict earlier, maybe sort of contrasting approaches earlier and that some of that has started to change in sciences that we're understanding that there are people out there who know this. But I think for us in writing the book, again, we wanted to find stories from people who knew these environments well. And the kinds of things that he knew about the ocean are, there's a level of knowledge there that is deeper than most people alive will ever acquire. 

And that is, you know, incredible and precious and obligation to share. I think that that defined the second part of his life and he had written about this and his surviving partner talked to us a lot about this as did the ethnologist who worked with him, that he had been invested with this knowledge in the hopes that he could save his people and his culture and his natural world. And he, his sort of way of passing it along was part of that. I think the main thing for us is just that that knowledge of the world was so incredible and so powerful and that there are people, maybe the lesson that there are people who have that knowledge still, that there are people around the world who know the ocean in this way, and that it is worth elevating their experience and their knowledge and appreciating it. I guess that's what I felt like we were trying to do there. But Tessa, I'm curious how you saw that story. 

Tessa Hill: I'm so glad that Eric told that story because I would have been petrified the whole time and I might get some pieces that wrong. Because it's so important. It's really not about taking knowledge from one place or another. 

It's about our willingness and our ability to listen and learn from each other and absorb the knowledge from different systems like we talked about earlier. I don't want to give away the whole story here. That's one of my favorite chapters actually. It's in the Clam garden chapter. I'm sure you remember that there's a moment where someone calls him on the phone and says, oh, we found this thing. We discovered this thing, traditional scientists saying we found this thing. And he says to his partner, that thing was never lost. 

We always knew it was there. And so it makes you wonder, are we asking the right questions? Are we having the right conversations? 

Are we listening enough to each other to learn from each other? Because he always had that knowledge and he could have been, he was very happy to share it with traditional, more traditional, you know, scientists. 

Tripp: It brings a couple things to mind. So I talked to Duane Haumacher, who is a professor here in Australia of Indigenous astronomy, which is a super cool topic. So there's two things that come up for him over and over. One is this idea of discovery. It only means something to Western scientists, right? These things are discovered for people who have been living with whatever it is for time and memorial. This is an ancient knowledge. It is also ancient knowledge, but it's a living knowledge. You know, these are people who carry this knowledge forward. And I won't give the whole story away, but that's a beautiful story. 

People can look forward to reading how that chapter plays out. Another character who I really thought was interesting and I couldn't believe I hadn't heard of her before was Marie Tharp. And so Marie Tharp, if I'm getting the details right, in around 1950 she was a cartographer, a map maker at Lamont Doherty [Columbia University]. 

The male scientists would go to see, they would collect the data and they would bring it back and Tharp would produce the maps. And so that was sort of her skill. And this was at a time when women were more or less barred from going to sea. 

I think you see in a book they were considered bad luck. So she didn't even board a research vessel until 1968. Could you talk about maybe a few of her accomplishments and maybe the lack of recognition she was getting at the time? 

Tessa Hill: Yeah, I mean, this is a great one. And again, I will feel nervous the whole time that I'm going to mess some of this up because she's really iconic for marine scientists, for marine geologists, and of course for women in science. But it's not limited to women in science. It's about major discoveries about how our planet works. And she was very involved in those discoveries. This was at a time period where there was a lot of debate about the idea of plate tectonics. So, the research was about the idea [...transcription error…] people began to piece together the theory of plate tectonics, which still stands today. 

It is how we understand our Earth to function is a series of plates sitting at the surface that are actually being moved around by heat, essentially, in the Earth's interior. And so, Marie Tharp's discoveries, but also just her sort of her painstaking work and her work through, you know, frankly, a lot of sexism, but also a lot of like scientific competition of her male co-authors, sort of persistence, this grit toward scientific discovery, I think is really inspiring. 

Tripp: Yeah, absolutely. And I think what came through to me, not knowing her story very well, but that she was just genuinely interested in the work and in the science. And I'm sure it hurt that she wasn't getting the recognition of her male colleagues, but that didn't stop her from doing the work she felt was important. The book opens with a quote from Rachel Carson. And of course, she wrote beautifully about the ocean and several books, including the Sea Around Us. But she also wrote this right book at the right time, The Silent Spring, and that catalyzed the environmental movement. 

And the US eventually led to the Endangered Species Act. One of the premises of this podcast is that science books have a role to play in society, and they're sort of, they're a force for good. What is your hope that people will take away from this book? 

Eric Simons: Going back to what we were saying a few minutes ago about Adam Dick and some of the people who know the ocean, part of what I hope here is just to convey an understanding of what people know about this place and how special some of that knowledge is and how important that is to the world that established that connection, that sometimes we learn to love a place by learning that other people love it too and following their lead there. And that knowing and understanding the different ways that people have connected to the ocean through time around the world can bring us a little closer to it. And I hope that people find stories in there that inspire them or make them curious or just make them feel some sense of being closer to other people who also love the ocean. 

Tessa Hill: Yeah, I love it. I mean, I'm gonna center my answer to this around Rachel Carson actually, because she's amazing and it's worth, I think a lot of people really associate her very strongly with Silent Spring, which is fair, that was like very important. But even before Silent Spring, she was a very accomplished naturalist and marine biologist. Again, a woman working in a very male dominated scientific field, but there are also two other things that I think people forget about her. And one is that she believed in the power of narrative. She really, she used storytelling to try to connect people to the environment. And so she really believed in what Eric just talked about. So I think she believed that if people felt more connected to the planet that we lived on, that we would have less of an appetite for destruction. 

In fact, I think there's a person quotes that sounds kind of like that. I just kind of quoted her. But the other really interesting thing about her work is that she was unafraid to be an advocate. She spoke out against things that worried her. She spoke out when she felt that the government was not making decisions that were reasonable for its citizens. She took career risks to really strongly advocate for wise management and sustainable management of the environment. 

And I think we lose sight of the fact that she's such an amazing model for what we can and should be doing today. So you ask, what's the main point of the book? What was the goal of the book? 

And I think it's to get back to that, right? Like things that are worth fighting for, we should fight for. And it may require risks or work or sacrifice, but it's also worth doing that together in communities of people. I think one of the sort of subtexts of the book is about partnerships and unlikely partnerships and the work that we can accomplish together when we're willing to do it with other people. 

Tripp: It's a person-to-person connection and building community. And actions of individuals is important, but I think building communities and sharing understanding is really where the power lies. We talked about a lot of excellent things in the book today. What about the future for you guys? Is there any project coming up that you'd like to talk about? 

Eric Simons: Give me 20 years to write the Rachel Carson biography. No, I don't have a project at the moment. For me, this is a pretty special opportunity to share a lot of stuff that I care about. And I continue to think about a lot. I continue to follow a lot. 

Tessa Hill: Yeah, I mean, we didn't really get to talk about the fact that both of my life and Eric's life changed quite a bit over the course of writing this book. For both of us, our job changed. Mine kind of remodeled into additional responsibilities. Eric actually took on a totally new job and we're each raising kids at the same time. 

So I think when we think about our futures, I think sometimes that definitely things feel a little complicated. I would be thrilled to write a book again. I'd be thrilled to write a book again with Eric. I think there's so much more to do on the front of connecting people to the ocean. We have so much work to do. It's definitely, they can feel a little discouraging the way things are headed. And I also think it's incredibly true that every positive step we take today or this month or this year matters. So it's not too late for the ocean. In fact, it's just in time. There will be more of this for me. Awesome. 

Tripp: And if people want to stay up to date with what you guys are up to, what's the best way to find you and support your work? 

Tessa Hill: The book does have a website and I try to keep it moderately updated and we do have events. We still have quite a few events going on. We're almost a year after the book released and both of us are still getting quite a few requests around the book, which is great. And so if your listeners have something in mind that they'd like to do, they can reach out on the website. And then I think both Eric and I are pretty easy to find. Also, info is on the book website. That's at ateverydepth.com. 

Tripp: Great, I really love the book. If you're listening to this and you're enjoying the conversation, really need to go out there and get the book, give it a read or give it a listen. This has been Tessa Hill and Eric Simmons and we've been talking about at every depth our growing knowledge of the changing oceans. Tessa and Eric, thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much. 

Tripp: Hey, Tripp here. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, there are a few ways you can help us keep the conversation going. First, be sure to subscribe, rate and review the podcast. 

It really helps us connect with more listeners. If you can, also share the episodes with friends and family on social media. We also have a Patreon. So if you have the means, please consider supporting us directly. Patreon supporters get access to the book science community and bonus content only available for supporters. The Patreon is also a great place to get in touch and we'd love to hear from you. So what books would you like to hear us cover next? Remember, you can find show notes and all things book science, as well as everything else I'm working on at TrippCollins.com. Thanks for listening. I am Tripp Collins and this has been Book Science. Your invitation to thank people is to stay curious, get off the scroll and get out into the world. Take care.