Reddit mentions of The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea

It isn't strictly marine bio, but The Wave is a good book about some legendary surfers and the science of rogue waves. The Ocean of Life is another good one by Callum Roberts, and Four Fish takes a critical look at four popular fish that humans rely on.

Actually the gyres clean themselves and plastic ends up on beaches. All we have to do is stop dumping plastic into the ocean and we'll just have a job of beach cleanup for a few decades, which is much easier than trying to clean it from the oceans. Although I do wonder if as we see ocean levels rise and coastal flooding occurs, how much crap will get washed out to sea?

But aside from our land pollution getting out there, the greater factors are overfishing (especially with fraud of many making already-suspect quotas a false justification for anyone to continue), trawling, drilling, depleting ozone, temperature disruptions and acidification from CO2. Aside from their particular effects, they also combine to simply make "overstress" a symptom.

Read The World is Blue and The Ocean of Life to learn more about the issue. To show others who may not be inclined to read a book from a scientist, Oceana is a nice simplistic introduction with many graphics to illustrate.

While I understand how possible it is to avoid, I am not optimistic at all. Capitalism helps drive mankind onward to make us dependent on accelerating all our bad habits past and regardless of any measure of our own wisdom or concern, and that is when we're even aware of the issues taking place. I believe the weight of the masses is too great right now. Disseminating the information in itself is too great a challenge, but restructuring the modes of living and survival of all as well? In 50 years? We have rough times ahead, but more so for our grandkids than you and me.