THIS MONTH’S
CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE:
Aïda Grovestins is a
Senegal-based journalist
and filmmaker covering West
Africa and beyond. Her latest
co-produced documentary
film, The Trial of Hissène
Habré, will appear in 2020.Diva Amon is a deep-
sea scientist and marine
biologist from Trinidad and
Tobago. She is currently
a research fellow at the
Natural History Museum,
London.Grace Blakeley is a political
economist and the author
of Stolen: How to save the
world from financialisation,
published by Repeater
Books in September 2019.Bruno Carachesti
is a journalist and
photography professor
at the University of the
Amazon and specializes in
documenting everyday life
in Belém do Pará, Brazil.EDITOR’S LETTER
COVER PHOTO: TOMMY TRENCHARD AND
AURÉLIE MARRIER D'UNIENVILLE/PANOS
VANESSA BAIRD for the
New Internationalist
Co-operative newint.org
SEA FEVER
‘I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and
the sky,’ we would belt out, in ragged unison, aged 10.
‘And all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by.’
Our teacher’s idea of imparting English literature was
to get the class to learn by heart her favourite poems.
This was one of our favourites too, judging by the
decibel level at which we would deliver it.
John Masefield’s lines speak to the pull of the sea,
that elemental compulsion that makes the time it takes
between spotting that distant stretch of blue and getting
into it or riding its waves far too long.
My great-grandfather most likely felt it – running away
to sea not once but twice during his teens, according
to family lore. He carried on charting his own course
through life, becoming a vegetarian and, when forced to
be on land, wearing only suits of green tweed. His fiery
temper gave him a fearsome reputation, but I remember
him as a salty dog with an aura of the sea’s freedom
about him, good to four-year-olds and no trouble at all.
The romance of the freedom of the seas is so potent
that a question like ‘Who owns the sea?’ might seem
absurd. But as this edition’s Big Story shows, it is of
profound relevance in times of accelerated resource
grabbing, militarization of the seas, plastics pollution and
climate destruction. And so is the follow-on question:
‘How can we save the sea?’
Elsewhere in this issue, Roshan De Stone and David
Suber investigate the scandal of domestic slavery in
Lebanon, and poet Blake Morrison searches for what it is
to be English.THE NEW INTERNATIONALIST multi-
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9001-@newint facebook.com/newintSEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2019 3