Thrilling whale watchers, stumping scientists and reminding environmentalists of the fragility of our ecological balance, the mysterious, massive gray whale takes an epic and emotional place in our hearts and minds. Here Russell (The Man Who Knew Too Much), an environmental journalist best known for sparking a movement to save the Atlantic striped bass, makes a passionate argument for the protection of California grays, dubbed "whales of passage" by the 19th-century whaler and naturalist Charles Melville Scammon. Juxtaposing his tale of the history and migration of the grays with Scammon's writings about them, Russell follows the whales' yearly 5000-mile swim from the warm lagoons in Baja—where they give birth and exhibit "friendly" behavior toward humans—up the Pacific coast of North America to the shallow and comparably chilly feeding grounds of Chirikof Basin in the Bering Sea. Along the way, he tells the harrowing tale of the gray's near extinction due to commercial whaling and the many real threats to the species from predators and human commercial development, while also gleefully detailing the work of marine biologists and environmentalists. For journalistic balance, Russell grudgingly gives some space to those he finds threatening to the grays; for example, he tepidly interviews members of the Makah tribe who hunted and killed a gray in 1999 and those involved in Mitsubishi's salt farming interests. However, their perspectives are quickly swallowed up by his disdain for their conflicts of interest and his articulate expression of the imperative to protect the gray whale specifically and marine life in general. (Aug.)
Forecast:Our fascinating friends of the deep have many fans. If the popularity of Robert Sullivan's more personal account of the Makahs' assertion of their whaling rights in last year's
A Whale Hunt is any indication, this will find an eager readership, though some may be daunted by its massive proportions.
