Free Delivery Over $100
|
|
|||
|
||||
Overview"Personal, anecdotal, and highly engaging, ""Watching Giants"" opens a window on a world that seems quite like our own, yet is so different that understanding it pushes the very limits of our senses. Elin Kelsey's colorful first-person account, drawing from her rich, often humorous, everyday experiences as a mother, a woman, and a scientist, takes us to the incredibly productive waters of the Gulf of California and beyond, to oceans around the world. Kelsey brings us along as she talks to leading cetacean researchers and marine ecologists about their intriguing discoveries.We encounter humpback whales that build nets from bubbles, gain a disturbing maternal perspective on the dolphin-tuna issue, uncover intimate details about whale sex, and contemplate the meaning of the complex social networks that exist in the seas. What emerges alongside these fascinating snapshots of whale culture is a dizzying sense of the tremendous speed with which we are changing the oceans' ecosystems - through overfishing, noise pollution, even real estate development. ""Watching Giants"" introduces a world of immense interconnectivity and beauty - one that is now facing imminent peril." Full Product DetailsAuthor: Elin Kelsey , Doc White , Francois GohierPublisher: University of California Press Imprint: University of California Press Dimensions: Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.30cm , Length: 20.30cm Weight: 0.454kg ISBN: 9780520249769ISBN 10: 0520249763 Pages: 216 Publication Date: 01 December 2008 Recommended Age: From 14 to 17 years Audience: General/trade , General Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Out of Print Availability: Awaiting stock  Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. Extreme Motherhood 2. A Sea of Milk 3. Looking for Whales in All the Wrong Places 4. Resident Aliens? 5. How to Make a Really Rich Sea 6. Popular Mechanics: What Chimpanzees and Dolphins Can Teach Us about Tools 7. Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who's the Smartest One of All? 8. Building Nets from Bubbles and Other Mysterious Talents of Humpback Whales 9. Do Baby Sperm Whales Suck Milk through Their Noses? 10. Deep Culture 11. What's the Use of Granny? 12. Dolphin Snatchers 13. Friendly Mothers, Friendly Calves? 14. The War on Fish 15. Why Blue Whales Gotta Be Big 16. What You Can See by Listening 17. What You Can Learn from the Dead 18. Let's Talk about Sex, Baby 19. Missing Meat 20. Shifting Scale Notes IndexReviewsAn appealing, agitating foray into the world of whales that ignites both protective instincts and a hungry curiosity to know more. Kirkus Reviews Cogent, compassionate ... Brilliant at pursuing seemingly unrelated trails back down the blowhole, Kelsey illuminates the humanity of whales. Publishers Weekly Engaging portrayal of the lives and culture of whales. The Economist Charming... Will be of interest to all whale and dolphin watchers. Choice Environmental consultant Kelsey (Environment and Sustainability/Royal Roads Univ.; Canadian Dinosaurs, 2003, etc.) drifts between meditations and hard research in her wide-ranging work on various aspects of the lives of whales.Each of the 20 chapters explores with a suitable measure of awed fascination some aspect of cetacean study. Several are given over to the simple miracle and wonder of whales. The size and engineering of their sexual organs begs for attention, of course, but then so too do the bone-eating zombie worms that take a 100 years to break down a whale carcass in the deep sea. Without stretching the exercise too far, Kelsey tries to get into the head of a female whale to understand the acts of cooperative care and nursing of babies, to reflect on the effects of menopause and the wisdom of granny whales and to consider what it is like for a boy never to leave home. Killer whale sons off the coast of Washington and British Columbia stay with their mothers their entire lives, she writes. They're the only male mammals in the world to do so. (For the moment, the author has apparently forgotten about the human species.) Kelsey demonstrates how shifting baselines, slowly getting smaller and smaller, have skewed our expectations of natural, healthy population numbers, and she does a convincing job describing how humpback whales use bubbles as tools to catch their dinner. She is a restless investigator, moving comfortably from the head to the heart. One moment she's bending the reader's mind by suggesting that blue whales might actually be able to hear the ocean processes that produce thick patches of krill; the next she is undone by the destructiveness of humans, ignorantly fouling our nests as no other mammal in the world ever does. The havoc we have wreaked on ocean fisheries is like war: Everywhere there are unspeakable numbers of dead and dying. An appealing, agitating foray into the world of whales that ignites both protective instincts and a hungry curiosity to know more. (Kirkus Reviews) An appealing, agitating foray into the world of whales that ignites both protective instincts and a hungry curiosity to know more. --Kirkus Reviews Cogent, compassionate ... Brilliant at pursuing seemingly unrelated trails back down the blowhole, Kelsey illuminates the humanity of whales.--Publishers Weekly Engaging portrayal of the lives and culture of whales. --The Economist Charming... Will be of interest to all whale and dolphin watchers. --Choice Charming... Will be of interest to all whale and dolphin watchers. --Choice An appealing, agitating foray into the world of whales that ignites both protective instincts and a hungry curiosity to know more. --Kirkus Reviews Cogent, compassionate ... Brilliant at pursuing seemingly unrelated trails back down the blowhole, Kelsey illuminates the humanity of whales.--Publishers Weekly Engaging portrayal of the lives and culture of whales. --The Economist Charming... Will be of interest to all whale and dolphin watchers. --Choice Author InformationElin Kelsey is the author of Saving Sea Otters, Finding Out about Whales, Strange New Species, and other books. She consults for environmental organizations including the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the World Conservation Union (IUCN). She is a faculty member in the School of Environment and Sustainability at Royal Roads University in Canada. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
||||
