Casting Seaward: Fishing Adventures in Search of America's Saltwater Gamefish - Hardcover

by Steve Ramirez (Author), Bob White (Illustrator), Kirk Deeter (Foreword by)

In Casting Seaward, author, naturalist, and educator Steve Ramirez expands beyond the geographical scope of his first two books by traveling thousands of miles by plane, motor vehicle, boat, and foot pursuing the native gamefish of North America's salt and brackish water habitats. This journey includes following anadromous fish like salmon from the ocean's depth to the shallowest tributaries of Alaskan rivers, and following rivers and streams from their freshwater sources to their brackish water deltas. In the course of this journey, Ramirez explores and fishes portions of the entire American coastline from the Northern Atlantic coast to the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and up the Pacific coast from California to Alaska. The entirety of this sojourn was written while traveling through the COVID-19 pandemic, and it touches on the lessons that challenges such as global pandemics, global ecological and sociological disruption, and global opportunities for positive learning and change can teach us about nature and human nature. Most of all, Casting Seaward is a celebration of the bounty and beauty of our water-covered planet, and a recognition of its increasingly rarefied qualities. Each story is told in part through the eyes of the people who have lived alongside, and come to love, these waters and fish. Woven throughout these adventures are the stories of the people he meets and befriends while pursuing a mutual love of nature and the best of human nature, as the first criterion for finding common ground. Casting Seaward is an enthralling exploration, an insightful warning and call to action, and an exceedingly hopeful story in an all-too-often seemingly hopeless time. It is a story of fishing and friendship. It is a story of humanity's impact on nature, and nature's impact on humanity. It is our story, in this pivotal moment in the history of humanity and the living blue planet we call home.

Back Jacket

In times that all too often leave us feeling adrift in the prevailing currents of a human civilization and natural world in decline, where do we turn to find solace, purpose, direction, and hope? There is a reason why standing by the ocean's shore calls us to go deeper while seeking the answers to our most pressing questions. The ocean speaks to us with images of life's turmoil and tranquility. The ocean is our "Home Place." It is where life began - and its health reflects our own. Like its predecessors, Casting Seaward is at once an adventure and an act of discovery and recollection. It brings us deep into the heart of this living planet and reminds us that the fate of the ocean is the fate of humanity. In Casting Seaward Steve Ramirez takes us on an outdoor adventure exploring the salty shores, estuaries, reefs, and depths of North America, in search of saltwater and anadromous gamefish, meaningful friendships, and a hopeful future. Casting Seaward will take you to faraway places as varied as Alaska's Tongass Wilderness, California's giant kelp forests, the expansive estuaries of the Texas coast, the Caribbean's vast tidal sand flats, the mangrove forests and reefs of South Florida, the Low Country of South Carolina, and the wild coastal rips of Montauk, New York. You will dive beneath the ocean's surface and climb coastal rainforest mountains while following salmon from the sea to their birthplace. You will smell the pungent aroma of hidden bears. You will feel the powerful pull of outgoing tides. And you will learn a great deal about these places and its people along the way. Casting Seaward is about much more than fishing- it is about our lives on Earth and the life of the Earth. It doesn't matter if you are an angler, hiker, paddler, naturalist, or simply find peace walking along a beach at sunrise... Casting Seaward will transport you to times and places where you too can explore and experience the power of nature and the best of human nature.

Author Biography

Steve Ramirez is an outdoor and conservation author who lives and writes in the Texas Hill Country. Steve's first book, Casting Forward - Fishing Tales from the Texas Hill Country, is a winner of the Excellence in Craft Award from the Outdoor Writer's Association of America. His second book, Casting Onward - Fishing Adventures in Search of America's Native Gamefish has received critical acclaim as an important work of outdoor adventure and conservation literature. Steve currently writes the Seasonable Angler column for Fly Fisherman Magazine and his work has appeared in various journals including, Fly Fisherman, Trout Magazine, The Flyfish Journal, American Angler, Tail Magazine, Texas Sporting Journal, Explore Magazine, Under Wild Skies, Cutthroat: Journal of the Arts, The Houston Literary Review, and many more. Steve serves as the Ambassador for Texas for the American Museum of Fly-Fishing, is a Life Member of Trout Unlimited, and a contributing member of the Nature Conservancy, and Audubon. As a certified Master Naturalist, Steve is passionately involved in promoting the restoration and conservation of the watersheds, rivers, canyons, forests, deserts, wetlands, grasslands, and shorelines of North America and beyond. He is an avid hiker and world adventure traveler who has explored four continents, but who always seems to return home to the spring fed Hill Country streams of Texas.