A Glimmer of Silver, Juliet Kemp
A Glimmer of Silver is a novella looking at not first contact, but how contact with an alien lifeform might evolve. It reminds me of some other story that I can’t quite bring to mind, which is driving me a bit nuts. Anyway, the idea is that the ocean of this planet is in fact sentient, and humans are — for the most part — carefully keeping themselves separate from it, thinking that this is what Ocean wants. No fishing, no drinking the water (without careful distillation), etc.
Jennery is a Communicator, but a reluctant one, having wanted to become a musician instead. Still, it seems that what Ocean wants is not at all what the status quo has established, and the humans on Ocean (other than the Communicators) are equally restless.
The solution is a neat one, and worth pondering. Overall, it’s a fairly slight story, but worth it, I think.
Thematically completely different, but Stanislaw Lem’s “Solaris” is also about communicating with a sentient ocean. Of course being Lem, the point is communication is impossible etc (also there’s weird racism and sexism mixed in their because eh, Soviet Polish author in the 60s?).