Book Reviews

By William Rossiter

Books easily hold their own in this Googled age, even as electronic information and resources seem boundless. Books are for experiencing something tangible to learn from, give, treasure, savor, share, and as below, color. This is an eclectic sample of the variety waiting for you. If you don't want them for yourself or as gifts consider donating them to your local library.

Jump for Whales is a children's coloring book, with the large illustrations captioned in English, Spanish and French. Yes, it may be a perfect gift for your children or grandchildren, but here's the deal: we'll send you one of these books only if you send CSI a clearly marked donation of $25 or more, which we promise to use only to send many more of these superb books to several Latin American education centers we are helping in Peru, Venezuela, and Argentina, and more if we can afford it. We have several hundred to send out, but it is very expensive. While you watch your child enjoy coloring the whales and reading about them, perhaps learning a bit of another language, you can also picture many, many more kids in far away places doing the same, because of your donation. We want every copy to pass through many little hands. Help us to do it.

Jump... was produced by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) for their Caribbean Whale Education Programme, written by CSI board member Nathalie Ward and CSI Scientific Advisor Carole Carlson, and illustrated by Tessa Morgan. Knowing of our work, IFAW has kindly given CSI a big bunch to send out because we know lots of places where they could make a positive difference.

School children at ACOREMA's educational center in Pisco,
Peru, where the first books were sent. (Credit: Julio Reyes)

A Guide to the Identification of the Whales & Dolphins of Ireland? Of course! This book is perfect for a land with over 5,000 kilometers of coast, relative proximity to deep ocean waters, and a lot of people bracing wet winds on cliff tops to watch whales go by. But it's not just for Ireland. Written by Jim Wilson and Simon Berrow, it is 118 pages of pocket sized, water resistant, wire bound field guide, ready to go anywhere around the North Atlantic, including Cape Cod whale watches. Crammed with superb information, images, diagrams, and of course a bit of ancient history, legend, and the words of Eire, the book is available from the enthusiastic and productive Irish Whale and Dolphin Group, http://www.iwdg.ie/.

The Complete Whale-Watching Handbook, by Ben and Angus Wilson is as complete as 256 pages and $19.95 will allow, certainly enough to get someone who's never done it both motivated and equipped, and give experienced whale watchers far too many must-see options for one lifetime. This Voyageur Press book uses illustrations of species that are likely to be encountered on tours from almost anywhere, presenting natural history information more suited to reading from deck chairs than ship's railings. It's sort of a how-to encyclopedia, and it's hard to judge how much common-sense advice might have been left out to gain room for other details, but CSI would have preferred more images as whale watchers might see them, and more emphasis on the link between watching whales and helping them.

The Urban Whale: North Atlantic Right Whales at the Crossroads, is a scientific lament by scientists committed to the future of the species. Scott D. Kraus and Rosalind M. Rolland edited the collection, representing current knowledge about the whale's reproduction, feeding, genetics and endocrinology, versus the relentless pressure from human competition for space. It's about more than just ship strikes and fishing gear entanglements. This is a professionally certified advocacy for the right of this whale species to survive, as expressed by a cadre of experts who truly care. The Urban Whale is available for pre-order from http://www.amazon.com/ for $55.00, and should be available from the Harvard University Press about February.

The Marine Mammal Commission Annual Report to Congress 2005 is not a best-seller because it's free. More than a report on the doings of the Commission, it is also one of the most compact, thorough and factual resources on what humans are doing to and for marine mammals and their habitats. The Report is an invaluable reminder and refresher because, as everything seems to get more complex, it becomes harder to remember what happened, when, and why, which sets us all up to repeat mistakes and fail to find solutions. A lot of people need to read at least parts of this annual Report, but they just don't know it.

Workshop on Research and Conservation of the Genus Sotalia is a small book of abstracts or summaries of scientific projects presented at a Brazil meeting of specialists this June, so don't look for it on Amazon.com. In one hand you can hold the history of human knowledge on the creature usually called a "tucuxi", most of it learned only recently. What is a tucuxi? Picture a small version of the bottlenose dolphin, living in small groups while making a living in almost every coastal and river habitat from Honduras to Southern Brazil, inland via the Amazon all the way to the Peruvian Andes.

This book's listed here in celebration, for the tucuxi has not only been the easily accessible and affordable research subject for many, many start-up scientists CSI has helped (and this book shows the extraordinary value of their efforts) but their recent and happy challenge has been to determine if it is really two species, one generally coastal, the other preferring rivers. The book is also included here to represent a surprising library of books CSI has acquired over three decades, all available for short loans to members, albeit with lots of promises to ensure their return.

Rational Animals?, edited by Susan Hurley, University of Warwick and All Souls College, Oxford and Matthew Nudds, Department of Philosophy, University of Edinburgh, is a welcome, scholarly review of a hot topic fundamental to the debate over animal behavior, cognition and intelligence. The book looks at the resemblance of human and non-human mental processing, using examples of primates, dolphins and birds. Properly read, it challenges anyone's arguments that humans and non-humans are separated by a meaningful gap, instead supporting our growing acceptance that "we" are only different from "them" by degree. Huge (568 pages) and beyond our means (£75.00) we list it here in hopes someone will donate a copy to CSI's library.

http://www.cetaceanhabitat.org/ is the new Cetacean habitat directory for Marine Protected Areas and Sanctuaries, an online resource produced by Erich Hoyt and WDCS. It purposefully follows Erich's book, Marine Protected Areas for Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises (2005, Earthscan, London, 516pp), and right from its start-up is extremely well designed as a one-stop resource. Viewers can even suggest edits and additions. Listed references are exhausting, and the Conventions and Agreements section is where you want to find stuff on all those acronyms, from ACCOBAMS to UNCLOS. Meetings, Conferences and Workshops are also listed. The resources at this web site are sure to impress demanding teachers.

Delfinarios, by Dr. Yolanda Alaniz and Laura Rojas, will be published in November by AGT, Mexico City, Mexico. Available only in Spanish, Delfinarios covers all aspects of the dolphin display industry in Mexico and also provides an expert review of captive exploitation and bioethics with worldwide significance. During seven years of research every dolphin display in Mexico was investigated. The book covers wild population impacts, captures and trade, regulations and treaties, maintenance and entertainment, plus Dolphin Assisted Therapy, swim-with programs, and travelling circuses. It includes two particularly detailed and revealing case studies. CSI will post a comprehensive English introduction and summary on our web site, for which we are indebted to Laura and Annelise Sorg for their translation.