"It's Like An Inconvenient Truth...on a Boat!"

Yesterday's leaked list of 2007 Pulitzer finalists included last year's excellent LA Times series on the perils facing the world's oceans. Altered Oceans is to be nominated for the Exploratory journalism Pulitzer, and it's hard to think of any newspaper series from 2006 that was a more engaging read.

To put it frankly, Al Gore's environmental doc An Inconvenient Truth has got nothing on Altered Oceans. While the film discussed the horrible future of our environment, the newspaper series went into detail about how jacked-up the world's oceans are right now. After a week of reading about poisonous red tides, the death of virtually all marine life (other than bacteria and jellyfish) and toxic winds infecting coastal dwellers with debilitating diseases, LAist was so freaked out that it avoided the beach for a month.

In honor of the much-deserved nomination, LAist recommends revisiting the piece online now, or ordering the companion DVD. Because everyone knows, being scared shitless is so much better the second time around.