Scientists have been sounding alarms about extinctions of marine species for at least fifty years – we urgently need to understand better what science says and why. New digital technologies of surveillance and tracking, and new art forms, change how we perceive the ocean: everything is at stake for marine life's survival.
Professor Clare Brant, Professor Emeritus in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture
01 July 2026
New book offers alternative perspective on life under the sea
Texts about the inhabitants of our oceans can be seen as life writing, says Professor Clare Brant, Professor Emeritus in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture in the Department of English.
Underwater Lives: Humans, Species, Ocean brings together 100 years of writings by humans about life underwater, showing how people have sought to make meaning of the world under the sea.
With testimony from divers, scientists and camera operators – including those who worked on The Blue Planet and Blue Planet II – Professor Brant thinks in new ways about how we see the ocean, both through our own eyes and through the lens.
In understanding how writers have represented underwater lives, we can think about what terms and genres will help us protect the ocean and its inhabitants.
Through Underwater Lives, Professor Brant shows how arts, humanities and sciences occupy a shared cultural space. She reveals how to read these texts as examples of life writing – for example, autobiography by divers is also biography of marine beings and the ocean, which places marine biology in the category of life writing.
The sciences and humanities converge in popular science and memoir, which is where scientists now work to engage people in understanding better the nature of climate crisis.
Professor Clare Brant
Rather than splitting words and images into separate categories (such as literary and film studies), Professor Brant brings them together to think in new ways about how we see the ocean. This combination shows how underwater worlds are documented and imagined, as well as how these representations shape our understanding of marine life, ecology and the place of humans.
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Professor Emeritus in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture