cover image The Gulf Stream: Tiny Plankton, Giant Bluefish, and the Amazing Story of the Powerful River of the Atlantic

The Gulf Stream: Tiny Plankton, Giant Bluefish, and the Amazing Story of the Powerful River of the Atlantic

Stan L. Ulanski, . . Univ. of North Carolina, $28 (212pp) ISBN 978-0-8078-3217-2

Ulanski (The Science of Fly Fishing ) takes readers on a dizzying trip within, afloat and around the Gulf Stream, the “mighty oceanic river, powerful enough to be readily seen from space,” containing mysterious, scary and tasty creatures: the reclusive, 2,000-pound giant squid; swarms of tentacled, stinging Portuguese man-of-wars and a complex food chain, with tiny drifting phytoplankton (“the grasses of the sea”) at the bottom and the “almost mythic” bluefin tuna at the top. The book also depicts human life along the Gulf Stream: Columbus following the trade winds and the North Atlantic gyre to reach the New World; buccaneers and pirates of the Caribbean; Benjamin Franklin, “intrigued by the idea of a 'stream’ flowing through... the Atlantic Ocean” and hoping to speed up mail delivery, measuring and “meticulously recording” water temperatures on trips back and forth to Europe. Although the potentially urgent issue of the Gulf Stream in relation to climate change is given short shrift, this multifaceted treatment of “the blue god” offers something for almost every kind of ocean lover. (Sept.)