The Gulf: The Making Of An American Sea -- Jack E. Davis, c. 2017

The Gulf: The Making Of An American Sea -- Jack E. Davis, c. 2017.

The book fails. "Advertised" as a history of the Gulf, from the Pleistocene to the present. In fact, very little about pre-history and most about American history. In big scheme of things, a boring book. A reference book. 

Prologue

Winslow Homer
Fernand Braudel -- innovative Annales School
the book is said to cover the time period from the Pleistocene to the present (very little on the Pleistocene; mostly the present)

again, President Thomas Jefferson, brilliant
fifteen colonies -- not 13
the Gulf colonies of East Florida and West Florida
an angler discovered oil in the Gulf -- p. 7
** estuaries
T.S. Eliot: "Dry Salvages" -- p. 9
much emphasis on Fernand Braudel

Introduction
Birth

Gulf of Mexico's loop currents
150 mya:
sole landmass: Pangaea
one ocean: Panthalassa

so easy to remember:
150 mya
sole landmass; Pangaea, breaking up
sole ocean: Panthalassa

Volcanic surge
--> the GREAT DYING -- most severe extinction in Earth's history
nearly all marine life and most vertebrate land species lost!!

Pangaea --> starts breaking up about 200 mya

• Laurasia: northern hemisphere --> N/A and Europe
• Gondwana: southern hemisphere --> S/A and Africa

Meanwhile:

• water from the Atlantic rushed into the Gulf
• a rift to the west of Georgia
• then closed
• only source of water for the Gulf was through a strait ... east of Yucatán

Yucatán joins with Mexico -- an earthen dam; separates the Gulf from the Pacific?

Step back:

Three super-continents:

• Columbia (Nuna): 1.7 to 1.45 billion years ago
• Rodinia: 1 billion to 700 million years ago; unicelluluar to multicellular, about 800 mya (GK-PID)
• Pangaea
• Cambrian: 538 mya to 485 mya; note, again, began in/on Pangaea
• Cambrian-Triassic, the Great Dying, coincides with breaking up of Pangaea
• first dinosaurs: about 231 mya 
• Pangaea begins to break up about 200 mya

So, Pangaea breaks in half -- the "rift" is longitudinal, parallel with equator

• so we still have one ocean
• [I'm still not sure about that "rift" west of Georgia that pours "Atlantic" water what became the gulf]
• but then, Yucatán moves north and connects with Mexico -- causes an earthen dam and separates the west ocean from the east ocean
• Gulf changed multiple times
• dinosaurs appeared and disappeared;
• dinosaurs --> bird
  

Pleistocene:
late in the 20th century: a 110-mile-wide meteor-made depression identified at the edge of the Yucatán peninsula = chicxulub crater.

Chicxulub: the legendary Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction (K-P line)

p. 14:

• above the K-P line: few bones;
• below the K-P line: a lot of bones.

"Where rifting has occurred, oil has usually been found." --p. 14.

Important: explains why oil in Louisiana/Texas Gulf.

Homosassa estuaries / river.

Reason for the book: p. 15, top of page.

Edward O. Wilson: seven years old, 1930s -- in the Gulf!

p. 16: what mkes a sea a sea and a gulf a gulf
Gulf of Mexico much, much bigger than the Sea of Japan

Gulf Stream: a river -- p. 17.

Lorelie, p. 18.

Part One
Aborigines and Colonizing Europeans

One: Mounds

Two: El Golfo de Mexico

Three: Unnecessary Death 

Four: A Most Important River, and a "Magnificent" Bay
Spain
France
American Revolution

Part Two
American: 19th Century

Five: Manifest Destiny

Six: A Fishy Sea

Seven: The Wild Fish That Tamed The Coast
tarpon
Randy Wane White: 1970s
Wm Halsey Wood -- tarpon
Santa Fe RR

Eight: Birds of a Feather Shot Together

Part Three
Preludes to the Future

Nine; From Bayside to Beachside
North Dakota, Big Muddy: p. 224

Ten: Oil and the Texas Toe Dip

1933: Chicago, World's Fair
dinosaur exhibition sponsored by Sinclair Oil Corp
so successful, Sinclair adopted dino as its logo

Eleven: Oil and the Louisiana Plunge

1953

Twelve: Islands, Shifting Sands of Time

Walter Anderson: painter, watercolors, some oil

Thirteen: Wind and Water

Part Four: Saturation and Loss
Post-1945

Fourteen: The Growth Coast

Fifteen: Florida Worry, Texas Slurry

Sixteen: Rivers of Stuff

Seventeen: Runoff, Runaway

Eighteen: Sand in the Hourglass

Nineteen: Losing the Edge

Epilogue
A Success Story Amid So Much Else