A good read for lovers of Monterey Bay

I just finished reading a book called The Death and Life of Monterey Bay A Story of Revival by Stephen R. Palumbi and Carolyn Sotka.  It was a fun, interesting and quick read that I would definitely recommend to anyone who has visited and been enchanted by Monterey Bay or who is interested in marine conservation.  The first time I visited Monterey and Pacific Grove I immediately experienced it as a magical place full of history as a seaside fishing town and replete with natural beauty and sea critters.  The Monterey Bay Aquarium does an amazing job of showcasing the diverse and plentiful marine life of Monterey Bay and I love gazing out watching the sea otters float on their backs in the kelp.  The aquarium is built within an old cannery building on Cannery Row and I had known that the canneries once fished almost unfathomable numbers of sardines out of the bay before the fishery collapsed.  However, before reading this book I had not fully understood the extent of the environmental devastation that Monterey Bay had endured.  During the course of the 19th and first half of the 20th century the bay's resources were exploited one by one.  First the otters were hunted to the brink of extinction (and were in fact thought to be completely extinct), followed by California gray whales and abalone.  By the time the canneries started up the bay was already a greatly changed place.  The canneries not only fished out the sardines but also released large amounts of pollution into the bay and apparently the rocky shore was covered in rotting fish and flies.  Today Monterey Bay is an uplifting testament to the fact nature can regain a foothold when we leave a place alone and implement smart management.  The biggest change to Monterey Bay has been the return of the sea otters which have allowed kelp forests to flourish by keeping herbivorous sea urchin and abalone at bay.  The kelp in turn provides habitat for numerous fish species and allows a whole ecosystem to flourish.  The book tells the story of the rise and fall of Monterey Bay and the characters that have inhabited its shores over the course of the last 200 years.