Megalodons, Mermaids & Climate Change

A book review

Megalodons, Mermaids, & Climate Change

Ellen Prager and Dave Jones

Columbia University Press, 2024

225 pages

Marine scientist and author Ellen Prager and prominent meteorologist Dave Jones have teamed up to give us Megalodons, Mermaids & Climate Change, a slim volume of short, sometimes very short, explainers on the atmosphere and the oceans. They take on everything from jellyfish and coral reefs to hurricanes and climate change. The authors even include explainers on, well, megalodons and mermaids.

Jones, who worked as an on-air meteorologist NBC4 in Washington DC, founded StormCenter Communications, the part of the Aspen Global Change Institute that educates the public about extreme weather and climate change. Prager is the chief scientist for StormCenter Communications. Previous books include Sex, Drugs and Sea Slime and The Ocean’s Oddest Creatures and Why They Matter.

Teens are the target audience for this book. When I was a teen, I loved books like this one, books that took on the subjects of science and the natural world but were nonetheless easily digested. The tone is often light and sometimes humorous. And though the book is intended for a young audience, I never felt that the authors were condescending to their readers. I found the book’s writing to be on par with general interest magazines and newspapers. The book invites readers to jump around through the chapters, letting their curiosity guide them to the next topic.

With that said, and knowing that a fair percentage of readers of Harry Potter and other YA books are adults, I’m going to venture that some grownups would also appreciate Megalodons, Mermaids & Climate Change. I have to admit the book held my interest longer than I expected. For example, I’ve read popular science articles and books about lightning my whole life and always felt that I was not really wrapping my head around the topic. Prager and Jones’ explanation is probably the clearest I’ve ever run across. I also enjoyed the chapter on sea creatures, such as dolphins and sea turtles.

Besides explaining the science of the atmosphere and oceans, Prager and Jones spend a fair amount of time dispelling myths. I was surprised to find that some folks really do believe in mermaids, and some think that megalodons still roam the Earth. Instead of just dismissing these notions, or simply saying that no one has ever really seen a mermaid. the two authors give good solid reasons why a mermaid or merperson is a physical impossibility.

The chapter titled Information Mixology, takes on misinformation and how it starts and spreads. This happens all the time. People mishear things or make assumptions when they shouldn’t. Exacerbating the problem is the current state of the press and its science reporting. Science journalists don’t enjoy the support they once had. Many science stories are hastily done, resulting in inaccurate and misleading information.

The chapter Show Us the Data is a good mental martial arts course, giving tips on how defend oneself from lies and misinformation, how to check and double-check whether something is a reliable fact or spurious fiction. If I were to pick a chapter of this book to be required reading for high schoolers, it would be this one.

If I were to change one thing about the book, it would be the title. Having mermaids and climate change uttered in the same breath or sharing the same line of a title makes it too easy for some, either through ignorance or through their cynical use of disinformation, to make the inference that the authors think climate change is just as much a fantasy as the half human/half fish phantasms of the sea.