Local chemist and author spearheads marine environmental issues in first nonfiction book

Four decades after “Save the Whales” sentiment dominated headlines and pop culture, author and chemist Dr. Norman Holy is striving to protect a broader entity.

“We’ve got to save the ocean,” he said.

The Michigan native who currently resides in Bloomington said he translated extensive research into a literary wake-up call. His first nonfiction book, “Deserted Ocean: A Social History of Depletion,” hit store shelves last fall.

“We’ve allowed abuse in the oceans that we wouldn’t tolerate on land,” he said. “I wrote to raise political consciousness so we as a society don’t ignore the oceans.”

“Deserted Ocean,” which depicts a ship lodged in sand on the cover, chronicles the effects and future problems posed by overfishing and environmental abuse from past decades to now.

Holy said it’s his call for change.

“I’d like to see Americans putting the ocean as a larger priority,” he said.

Holy, who received his master’s degree in chemistry from Purdue University, said he wasn’t always so adamant about activism. As a landlocked Midwesterner, he said he never viewed the ocean as something exhaustible.

Because of his training as a chemist, he said he examines every problem through a scientific lens.

After moving to Pennsylvania in the late 1980s, Holy became a research fellow for Rohm and Haas, a specialty materials company, where he discovered the means to construct a more biodegradable plastic.

While his colleagues focused on golf tees and six-pack rings, Holy said his knowledge of fishing drove him to devise an underwater net that was safer for larger sea creatures captured by accident.

Recent variations of the net are infused with barium sulfate, commonly used for pigment in white paint, and are more visible to dolphins and porpoises. The nets proved effective after testing and earned Holy national acclaim, including the World Wildlife Fund’s “Smartgear” award in 2005.

“After being around dolphins for a while, you find they’re easy to like,” he said. “I wanted to reduce the number of unnecessary deaths as much as possible.”

Holy’s work saving sea mammals opened his eyes to another issue: the state of the ocean itself.

He said the world’s waters will be overfished and depleted to the point of collapse by 2048, according to a United Nations report.

“Small lifestyle changes can turn this around,” he said. “As a society, we’ve been careless.”

Allowing pollution and waste into waterways has raised toxicity in certain parts of the ocean, he said. That and increased acidity, combined with fishing in the same areas too frequently, threatens the health of underwater ecosystems.

As Holy started penning his book, his colleague, Canadian marine research ecologist Boris Worm, began warning North Americans what his similar findings suggested: Favorite seafoods will be nixed from menus in about four decades if fishing practices remain unchanged.

“Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world’s ocean, we saw the same picture emerging,” Worm said in a 2006 statement. “In losing species, we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems. I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are — beyond anything we suspected.”

Marine conversation biologist Pablo Bordino, who works with Holy to reduce fisherman capture of Franciscana dolphins in Argentina, said preserving the oceans is now a global concern.

“Many fish populations are collapsing around the world, and loss of biodiversity and physical and chemical changes affect the ecological services that the ocean give us,” he said.

Bordino said 18th-century German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said it best: “All is born of water, all is sustained by water.”

“There is a necessary challenge to face, and that is to safeguard ocean resources for future generations,” Bordino said.

Now in his third year in Bloomington, Holy said there are ways residents can minimize harm on the world’s waters.

“We can take pretty easy steps to help the environment,” he said. “The problem is solvable, but it takes the will to do it.”

Everyday practices such as recycling, allowing yard grass to grow longer and refraining from buying plastic bottles would benefit the environment more than most people realize, he said.

He said consumers should avoid purchasing overfished seafood from large corporation delis and opt for responsible selections at Bloomingfoods or farm-raised catfish and tilapia.

“I had to give up monkfish, which I think is the best tasting fish there is,” Holy said. “But it’s so overfished I’m not even tempted to eat it anymore. There’s a greater cause to consider.”