Book summary

In this probing investigation, a French scientist chronicles his unsuccessful attempts to persuade other scientists and politicians to eradicate a rapidly spreading imported algae. Meinesz warns of continual damage to the Mediterranean ecosystem unless the algae are controlled.

Media reviews

"[A] very interesting book...is really about. Meinesz, a professor of biology at the University of Nice, chronicles a biotic invasion that was manageably small when it was discovered in 1988 and has now become a full-scale environmental disaster. Meinesz's story in this sense is a sobering ecological one in which government inaction and bureaucratic obstructionism resulted in the failure to stop a serious menace when there was still time. But underlying that story is another one having to do with scientific information, its use and its misuse, its creation, deformation and manipulation....His book, ably translated by Daniel Simberloff, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, is utterly fascinating, not only because of the ecological battles he describes but also because of the wondrous natural phenomena involved....The invasion of Caulerpa taxifolia remains on the agenda of various European commissions and scientific bodies, so the story is not yet finished, but Meinesz has provided an instructive and absorbing account of where things stand and how they got that way."