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DEEP BLUE HOME

Name: DEEP BLUE HOME
Author: Julia Whitty
ISBN: 978-0-618-11981-3

AN INTIMATE ECOLOGY OF OUR WILD OCEAN

by Julia Whitty ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 9, 2010

A lovely, soft-spoken book about the “joy, inspiration, wonder, laughter, ideas” that come from relating to Earth’s...

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Mother Jones correspondent Whitty (The Fragile Edge: Diving and Other Adventures in the South Pacific, 2007, etc.) looks at the life of the oceans and the sea creatures she has observed over the past 30 years.

The author expresses significant concern about the fate of the many animals she has communed with, including a massive sea turtle—“straight out of prehistory…whose ancestors once shared the ocean with dinosaurs”—swimming in the Gulf of California with only a 50 percent chance of surviving in any given year because of the dangers of illegal capture, dangerous fishing gear and pollution. In the 1980s, Whitty spent two seasons on Isla Rasa, a small island off the coast of Baja California, where she assisted two scientists who were studying the behavior of falcons and the sea gulls and terns that they preyed upon. After visiting a neighboring island to observe least storm-petrels, “the smallest species among the smallest of all the seabirds,” she explains that they were probably named for Saint Peter, who, like the petrels, supposedly walked on water. In 1984, she and a partner filmed seals and small minke whales as they fished and witnessed an iceberg “slicing like a blue fluke into the air and listing in the wind before disintegrating into a debris field of slush and brash ice skidding across hundreds of yards of ocean surface.” Today, laments the author, along with the pollution of the oceans, modern fishing boats use monofilament fishing lines (with more than two billion hooks) and drift nets to catch tuna and cod, a practice that also threatens the lives of other fish, sea turtles and sea birds. In 2006, Whitty began work with a scientific crew searching for clues to the origins of life in the depths of the ocean.

A lovely, soft-spoken book about the “joy, inspiration, wonder, laughter, ideas” that come from relating to Earth’s “nonhuman world.”

Pub Date: July 9, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-618-11981-3

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2010

Categories:

NATURE | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

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KANZI

THE APE AT THE BRINK OF THE HUMAN MIND

by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh & Roger Lewin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 21, 1994

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Ape-language specialist Savage-Rumbaugh and science writer Lewin (co-author of Origins with Richard Leakey, 1977) run the superchimp Kanzi past us once again with this latest in the current deluge of books on animal brain power. Kanzi—already a phenom with Newsweek, Time, and National Geographic covers to his credit—is an ape with a mind of his own; his facility with communication (via a special keyboard) is a marvel. But Kanzi gets only limited airtime here; he's more like a sideshow barker's prop to entice the customers. The authors spend most of the book going over the history of ape-language research (and it does go back: Samuel Pepys's name is mentioned), briefly rummage in linguistic theory (long enough to unconvincingly trash Noam Chomsky), and visit with other ape subjects. When it comes to the use of language by the great apes, the jury is still out; they might have even gone home. Theorists continue to debate the importance of production versus comprehension, to dispute intentionality, to worry about an ape's reflectiveness. It is to Savage-Rumbaugh's credit that she gives as much importance to glances, gestures, and postures as communicative modes as she does to utterances and keyboard talent. It seems quite clear that the apes have no interest in joining the Yale debating squad, so why put them to that measure? When Kanzi is brought into the story, the tone lightens. He is a clever, humorous, astonishing character, and his developing relationship with Savage-Rumbaugh is where Lewin really shines. The quickly sketched vignettes are uniformly winning: For instance, Savage-Rumbaugh has her keys snatched by an obstreperous member of the ape troupe. She asks Kanzi to get them back. He shuffles over to the offending ape, murmurs in his ear, and the keys are returned forthwith. Call this effort ``Notes Toward an Understanding,'' for every theory is conjecture, but there are also many fine nuggets to be mined. (Photos, not seen) (First serial to Discover)

Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1994

ISBN: 0-471-58591-2

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Wiley

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994

Categories:

NATURE

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THE ORIGIN OF HUMANKIND

by Richard Leakey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 26, 1994

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There's an elegant, albeit humbling, logic to the first three books in the Science Masters Series, all coming in October. In the middle is Leakey (Origins Reconsidered, 1992, etc.) writing about, well, us. Then, lest we acquire an inflated notion of our own importance, there are the ultimate bookends of the beginning and the end of the universe: The Origin of the Universe, by John D. Barrow (Astronomy/Univ. of Sussex, England; PI in the Sky, 1992, etc.) and The Last Three Minutes, by Paul Davies (Natural Philosophy/Univ. of Adelaide, Australia; The Mind of God, 1991, etc.). The series is being published by an international consortium of 16 publishers. It's a serious, much-needed effort to bring practicing scientists in touch with the general public. Other heavyweight brainiacs lined up for the series include philosopher and cog-sci guy Daniel C. Dennett; paleontologist (and DiMaggiologist) Stephen Jay Gould; anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson; and artificial intelligence researcher Marvin Minsky. This is good publishing. PBS, eat your heart out.