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Title details for The Breath of a Whale by Leigh Calvez - Available

The Breath of a Whale

The Science and Spirit of Pacific Ocean Giants

by Leigh Calvez
Karen White
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
From the author of The Hidden Lives of Owls, an exploration of the elusive lives of whales in the Pacific Ocean, home to orcas, humpbacks, sperm, blue, and gray whales.
Leigh Calvez has spent a dozen years researching, observing, and probing the lives of the giants of the deep. Here, she relates the stories of nature's most remarkable creatures, including the familial orcas in the waters of Washington State and British Columbia; the migratory humpbacks; and the ancient, deep-diving blue whales, the largest animals on the planet. The lives of these whales are conveyed through the work of dedicated researchers who have spent decades tracking them along their secretive routes that extend for thousands of miles, gleaning their habits and sounds and distinguishing peculiarities. The author invites the listener onto a small research catamaran maneuvering among 100-foot-long blue whales off the coast of California; or to join the task of monitoring patterns of humpback whale movements at the ocean surface: tail throw, flipper slap, fluke up, or blow. To experience whales is breathtaking. To understand their lives deepens our connection with the natural world.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    February 26, 2019

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781977351067
      • File size: 227434 KB
      • Duration: 07:53:49

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      This book was written more for the eye than the ear, which makes its transition to audio difficult. The author offers up fascinating facts about whales, dolphins, and porpoises, such as how some dolphins can shut down half their brains at will. Long sentences with complex structures can be a challenge to follow. Narrator Karen White helps with an easy-on-the-ears narration. She handles scientific terms nicely, slowing down so listeners can digest them. But when the author piles multiple scientific names for species into a single series, the effect is numbing. White effectively captures the palpable excitement of whale-spotting expeditions, but these episodes can't overcome the work's other shortcomings. Listeners may prefer the author's previous book, THE HIDDEN LIVES OF OWLS. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      April 8, 2019
      These intimate but sometimes off-putting musings from naturalist Calvez (The Hidden Lives of Owls) on her cetacean experiences over two decades wander too heavily into her personal frustrations and problems. Although the ethological information she shares is detailed and well-presented, reflecting her background as a researcher for the Ocean Mammal Institute, she is explicit about now identifying as a writer and not a scientist after becoming disillusioned with the government’s lack of response to her studies of the disruptive effect on whale populations of the U.S. Navy’s use of low-frequency sonar. Nevertheless, her credulous mentions of other people’s theories that whales communicate across “unseen morphic fields, like invisible magnetic or gravitational fields,” and that dolphins are from other star systems, and her own theory about speaking to whales from inside her mind, will strike rational-minded readers as deeply questionable. Detailed accounts of her involvement in tagging expeditions express the immediacy of the experience of respectfully following the whales, but are marred by bland reconstructed dialogue between Calvez and her human colleagues. This memoir of mammalian encounters skirts a space between activist inspiration and spiritual memoir, and misses both marks.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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