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Guernsey Literary Festival - Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes our World

Helen will be at Guernsey Literary Festival talking about her book (scheduled for publication on 1 June 2023) “Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes our World”.

All of Earth's oceans, from the equator to the poles, are a single engine powered by sunlight - a blue machine. Human history has been dictated by the ocean; the location of cities, access to resources, the gateway to new lands have all revolved around water. We live inside the weather the ocean generates, and breathe in what it breathes out.

Helen dives deep to illuminate the murky depths of the ocean engine, examining the messengers, passengers and voyagers that live in it, travel over it, and survive because of it. From the Ancient Polynesians who navigated the Pacific by reading the waves, to permanent residents of the deep like the Greenland shark that can live for hundreds of years, she explains by way of vast currents, invisible ocean walls and underwater waterfalls how all have their place in the oceans' complex interlinked system.