A powerful call to action that shows how science, culture, and hope can converge to restore one of Earth's most vital marine habitats
Award-winning Journalist David Helvarg’s 8th book: ‘Forest of the Sea – The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp’ with Island Press - an imprint of Princeton University Press.
In a matter of decades, a spectacular cold-water paradise thirty million years in the making is succumbing to warming oceans. Kelp forests are largely out of sight, hidden under the ocean's surface, yet they are one of Earth's most wonderous and underappreciated marine habitats. It's an ethereal light-infused realm of sharks, otters, eels, sea stars, crabs, rockfish, and myriad other species vital to a functioning ocean and the countless coastal communities that make their living from the sea. Unlike coral reefs, whose similar plight plays out in tropical waters highly visible to vacationing tourists, kelp forests thrive along cold-water coastlines far from tourist centers. What will it take to stop the decline before these underwater playgrounds bursting with colorful life become vast fields of lifeless urchin barrens?
For readers who know kelp only as tangles on the ocean surface or smelly mounds of seaweed littering beaches, Forest of the Sea reveals a thriving three-dimensional underwater world of color and beauty whose loss if allowed to happen will reverberate in unimaginable ways for both nature and humans. David Helvarg, a veteran journalist and accomplished scuba diver, takes us on a memorable journey beneath the waves through kelp's natural and human history, the billions of dollars of products and services it contributes to our global economy, the unwitting human activities that threaten its survival, and the hopeful movements around the world to restore kelp habitat. Helvarg introduces us to Indigenous leaders promoting sea otter reintroduction, out-of-work urchin fisherman, documentary filmmakers, and ocean scientists all working in an unlikely collaboration to restore and protect kelp forests while promoting a growing range of uses for food, medicine, and energy.
Forest of the Sea is the first book to document what is at stake if we lose these irreplaceable marine jewels, helping readers to understand how these natural systems might adapt and survive.
Forest of the sea
Eight Books, One Mission: Restoring Our Blue Planet
Forest of the Sea
Rescue Warriors
The Golden Shore
Saved by the Sea
War Against the Greens
50 Ways to Save the Ocean
The Ocean and Coastal Conservation Guide 2005-2006
Blue Frontier: Dispatches from America's Ocean Wilderness
David Helvarg has spent decades chronicling the fight for our oceans — and the fighters themselves. From The War Against the Greens, an unflinching look at the backlash facing environmentalists, to Blue Frontier and Rescue Warriors, his deep dives into ocean policy and the Coast Guard's conservation role, Helvarg's writing bridges hard journalism and hard-won hope. The Golden Shore traces California's complicated relationship with its coastline, while Saved by the Sea turns personal, exploring what the ocean means to those who love it. And 50 Ways to Save the Ocean — winner of the Herman Melville Award and inspiration for an award-winning video — has sold over 20,000 copies by putting real, actionable solutions in readers' hands. Together, these six books (with a seventh underway) form a body of work as vital and restless as the sea itself.
David Helvarg is an author and Executive Director of Blue Frontier, an ocean policy group, and co-host of the Rising Tide Ocean Podcast (and radio show). He has written seven books: Blue Frontier (now available on Kindle), The War Against the Greens, 50 Ways to Save the Ocean, Rescue Warriors, Saved by the Sea, The Golden Shore and Forest of the Sea (2026). He’s editor of the Ocean and Coastal Conservation Guide and co-founder of the Peter Benchley Ocean Awards, the world’s top marine conservation prize.
Helvarg worked as a war correspondent in Northern Ireland and Central America, covered a range of issues from military science to the AIDS epidemic and climate, and has reported from every continent including Antarctica. An award-winning journalist, he produced broadcast documentaries for PBS, The Discovery Channel, and others. His print work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, LA Times, Smithsonian and National Geographic. He’s done radio work for Marketplace, AP radio, and Pacifica, as well as led workshops for journalists in half a dozen countries. David is also a licensed Private Investigator, body-surfer and scuba diver.
David Helvarg
