2019-06-01_New_Scientist

1 June 2019 | New Scientist | 31

Book

Ocean Outbreak:

Confronting the rising

tide of marine disease

Drew Harvell

University of California Press

CORAL bleaching has become

something of an everyday

apocalypse. Researched,

documented and foretold,

it is a biotic meltdown to

which we have become all

too accustomed. But the seas

hold other more insidious

disasters, as much our fault

as the heating of the oceans.

They tend, though, to be

less covered by the media,

which is why Ocean Outbreak

is such an important book.

Its author, Drew Harvell,

is an ecologist at Cornell

University, New York, and

a specialist in diseases

of marine life. As head of

a World Bank task force, she

became increasingly worried

by widespread ignorance

about diseases that could

destabilise temperate and

tropical marine ecosystems.

Harvell’s clear and clever

prose takes us from the

Indonesian coral reefs to

Californian kelp beds, from

Caribbean sandy beaches to

Washington state’s inlets, as

she shows us an unfolding

series of ecological disasters.

There is the mystery disease

that laid waste to most of

California’s starfish, making

their arms fall off and their

guts spill out. Then there is

the infection that made the

abalone’s muscular foot

wither, so that the rock-

clutching mollusc couldn’t

feed. Or the agent that ate

holes in sea fans, creating

purple halos as it went.

Piece by piece, Harvell

brings the science to life,

through dedicated lab and

fieldwork. We see dead ends,

disasters, eureka moments

and slow, encouraging

recoveries, as she makes plain

what might have happened –

and might still – if diseases

had taken even deeper hold.

Ocean Outbreak does a

first-rate job of inspiring

readers, and of providing the

right kind of proselytising to

turn marine epidemiology

into a go-to career for a new

and concerned generation. ❚

Adrian Barnett is a rainforest

ecologist at Brazil’s National

Institute of Amazonian Research

in Manaus

Killers in the sea

Don’t miss

Watch

Dark Phoenix, in which

a solar flare turns Sophie

Turner into an extremely

powerful mutant, is a

direct sequel to X-Men:

Apocalypse. In UK

cinemas from 5 June.

Visit

Dark Matter fills

Science Gallery

London from 6 June,

in an exhibition that

promises to examine

the fundamental nature

of reality – or at least

explain why 95 per

cent of all matter in

the universe is hidden.

Play

Trover Saves the

Universe is a bizarre

comedy-action game

from Rick and Morty

co-creator Justin Roiland,

pitting you and your

canine-ish friend against

beaked villain Glorkon.

He is using dogs’ life

essences to destroy the

universe. From 31 May.

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their own sake do not interest
him. “I never use dynamic data
in my work,” he says.
He did try, once. In 2014, he won
a residency at the Large Hadron
Collider at CERN, Switzerland. But
he found the data overwhelming.
“They have supercomputers and
one experiment takes two years
to analyse and compute,” he says,
“and still it’s not really enough.
They proposed I use this dynamic
data, but how could one single
artist handle this? We talk of ‘big
data’ but no one imagines really
how big it is.”
So Ikeda’s data-verse 1 project,
which will take a year and two
more productions to reach
fruition, is founded on that most
old-fashioned of ideas, a record
of objective truth. It is neither
easy nor cheap to realise, and is
being supported by watch-makers
Audemars Piguet, an increasingly
powerful patron of artists who
operate on the boundaries
between art and science.
Last year, the firm helped
Brighton-based art duo
Semiconductor realise their
CERN-inspired kinetic sculpture
HALO. Before that, it invited lidar
artist Quayola to map the Swiss
valley where it has its factory.
While Audemars Piguet has
an interest in art that pushes
technological boundaries, Ikeda
fights shy of talk of technology,
or even physics. He is interested
in the truth bound up in numbers
themselves. In an interview with
Japanese art critic Akira Asada
in 2009, he remarked: “I cannot
help but wonder if there are
any artists today that give real
consideration to beauty. To me,
it is mathematicians, not artists,
who epitomise that kind of
individual. There is such a
freeness to their thinking that it
is almost embarrassing to me.” ❚

Wrecked starfish and sea fans with purple holes

should worry all of us, finds Adrian Barnett