So begins Joy McCann's Wild Sea, the remarkable story of the world's remote Southern, or Antarctic, Ocean. Unlike the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, and Arctic Oceans with their long maritime histories, little is known about the Southern Ocean. This book takes readers beyond the familiar heroic narratives of polar exploration to explore the nature of this stormy circumpolar ocean and its place in Western and Indigenous histories. Drawing from a vast archive of charts and maps, sea captains' journals, whalers' log books, missionaries' correspondence, voyagers' letters, scientific reports, stories, myths, and her own experiences, McCann embarks on a voyage of discovery across its surfaces and into its depths, revealing its distinctive physical and biological processes as well as the people, species, events, and ideas that have shaped our perceptions of it. The result is both a global story of changing scientific knowledge about oceans and their vulnerability to human actions and a local one, showing how the Southern Ocean has defined and sustained southern environments and people over time.

Beautifully and powerfully written, Wild Sea will raise a broader awareness and appreciation of the natural and cultural history of this little-known ocean and its emerging importance as a barometer of planetary climate change.

Welcome to my blog. I am an Australian environmental and cultural historian and writer with a Master of Arts in public history from Monash University and a PhD in history from the Australian National University.

My research interests include the natural and cultural histories of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica; oceans in the Anthropocene; environmental perception and memory; cultural heritage conservation; history in museums; the ecological humanities; and community-based history and storytelling.

I have written on many aspects of Australian environmental, cultural and political history, drawing on my experience as a public historian, researcher and curator in the heritage, museums and library sectors. I am currently writing a history of Australians in Antarctica for the National Library of Australia, and working on a new book about global oceans, seas and shores with Erika Techera, Professor of Environmental Law at the University of Western Australia. I am also planning some future writing projects to do with Antarctic ice, oceanic migrations and connections in the southern hemisphere, human-animal relationships, and island environmental stories.

I am currently an Academic Visitor at the ANU School of History and member of the Centre for Environmental History. In recent years I have worked as a senior parliamentary researcher, and I have a long-standing interest in the history of women’s political rights.

Source: joymccann.blog