The Oyster Thief

by Sonia Faruqi

  Upon completing her quest for the elixir, Coralline finds that the solution was in her all along. I found the same—the underwater world did exist somewhere in the abyss of my imagination; I just had to patiently, painstakingly haul it up to the surface.

  The End and the Beginning

  Over the course of writing The Oyster Thief, I started to think of the ocean as not just a giant ecosystem but as a giant organism. We hurt this organism constantly, sometimes without knowing it. For instance, we lather on chemical sunscreen when we snorkel above reefs, but the chemicals in the sunscreen kill reefs. Solution: Use mineral sunscreen instead of chemical.

  Due to a multitude of factors, from chemical sunscreen and coral reef dynamite blasts to, more importantly, climate change and the resulting warming waters and ocean acidification, coral reefs are bleaching around the world.

  Life throughout the oceans is threatened by human activity.

  Rampant levels of fishing are resulting in the collapse of fish populations and the endangerment of species. Solution: Let’s eat more sustainably. Trash and plastic pollution is creating immense, swirling garbage patches. Solution: Let’s reduce plastic use, recycle more, and be mindful of our waste. Oil pollution is another danger. The Oyster Thief portrays a single-site spill, but such spills account for only a small portion of the total oil pollution in the ocean. Other sources of oil include ships and runoff from land. Solution: Let’s invest more in renewable energy.

  A new area of danger has opened recently. When I started The Oyster Thief, I construed the idea of underwater mining as fictional; it is now fact. Companies are starting to dredge the depths of the ocean for diamonds. Solution: Let’s not go there.

  Overall, let’s not treat the world under the waves as Ocean Dominion does, as a set of resources to plunder. Oceans have been there always, and they will be there always, but their health has come to depend on us. We can choose to steward their depths even though we cannot peer into them.

  Project Animal Farm

  by Sonia Faruqi

  Born out of a global expedition fearlessly undertaken by a young woman, Project Animal Farm offers a riveting and revealing look at what truly happens behind farm doors. It illuminates a hidden world that plays a part in all of our lives.

  “An engaging account . . . about this most secretive of global enterprises.”

  —J. M. Coetzee, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

  “People will be talking about this book for decades.”

  —John Robbins, author of The Food Revolution

  “Everybody who is interested in food policy and

  animal welfare should read this book.”

  —Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation

  THE OYSTER THIEF

  Pegasus Books Ltd.

  148 W. 37th Street, 13th Floor

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2018 Sonia Faruqi

  First Pegasus Books edition October 2018

  Interior design by Maria Fernandez

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN: 978-1-68177-791-7

  ISBN: 978-1-68177-841-9 (ebk.)

  Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

  www.pegasusbooks.us