Eye of the Albatross | Eye of the Albatross: Views of the Endangered Sea

A Classic | Eye of the Albatross: Views of the Endangered Sea | Carl Safina

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	• Eye of the Albatross: Views of the Endangered Sea Carl Safina Henry Holt & Company, Inc., 2002 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 13 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Fantastic - a must read!

Brilliant, poignant and often painful. A must read! Beautifully written tale of the various species of albatross, whose survival is increasingly vulnerable to modern conditions and the willingness of homo sapiens (so-called) to change their behavior so that others may live. The story is one of struggle, hope, the power of sheer persistence and of life's resilience under increasingly bleak conditions. More generally, the book is an overview of the devastation of the ocean environment. "Eye of the Albatross" was the well-deserving winner of the 1993 John Burroughs Medal for distinguished natural hitory writing.

Safina's latest piece of natural history brilliance is "Voyage of the Turtle: In pursuit of the Earth's Last Dinosaur" (2006). Safina is president of Blue Ocean Institute, which he co-founded in 2003, so he's putting his prodigious talent to work to make the world a better place.

By Kyle Gardner, author of Medicine Rock Reflections

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Eye of the Albatross

This is a stunning description of an even more stunning creature. Part scientist, part poet, part mystic: Carl Safina is an albatross's best friend. The reader is instantly and forevermore smitten. Read this book! You will fall in love with the world's most magnificent long-distance flyer-glider. You will not think of wind in the same way, nor gravity. You will become a more patient diligent steadfast joyous courageous human being.

A Classic

Carl Safina possesses a rare combination of talents: he a scientist who also writes beautiful descriptive prose. He vividly captures the spirit of the ecosystems and animals that he is describing, while staying factually informative.

This is a great read. It made me appreciate the open ocean in ways that I had never considered.

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Please read this book.

If you are already amazed with the animals that share our planet, your enthusiasm will be rewarded and expanded when you meet Amelia , her chick, and their neighbors on a tiny isolated island in the Hawaiian chain. If you are beginning an interest in the natural world, this is a inspiring place to begin. Pure science meets pure poetry in one wonderful read. The Eye of the Albatross is an important book, and a beautiful one.

Fabulous soarings, fishing sensibly and . . . frozen skivvies??

How would you feel at the sight of a weary seabird coughing up a plastic toothbrush while trying to feed its chick? Carl Safina observed this while studying the Laysan Albatross. After cruising the North Pacific for days, soaring over thousands of kilometres seeking forage for that hatchling, one of bathroom utensils was the proferred dessert. To Safina, it means "No place, no creature remains apart from you or me."

In this exquisitely written account of how the mysterious albatross lives, we learn of those fabulous flights, how the bird manages its energy budget, and of the many perils it endures throughout a life nearly as long as that of humans. Centred on Tern Island, a tiny atoll halfway along the Hawaiian chain, research teams are studying the Laysan Albatross, turtles and sharks. Safina recounts the work and the conditions. Among other tasks, ten Laysans are tagged at nesting time, allowing satellites to track their wanderings. Safina dubs one female "Amelia", describing her flights into the North Pacific. Nesting birds must accumulate resources because offspring are demanding. The parents will lose up to 20% of their body weight in supplying the chicks. Once hers has hatched, she and her mate, who have shared incubation duties, now take turns fetching breakfast for the little squawker. Safina, who has watched these birds, remains in awe of Amelia's abilities to navigate. The maps he provides display ever greater distances travelled and Amelia's obvious skills in locating fodder. He notes than in a lifetime of half a century, a Laysan may cover nearly six million kilometres of oversea flight.

Within his sojourn on Tern Island, Safina makes a couple of jaunts of his own. One is much further west to Laysan Island itself. There, invasive species events have led to unusal security. The introduction of a destructive weed not long before has forced the stipulation that not only must ALL clothing be brand new, it must all be frozen to kill any organisms. Safina describes the donning of frozen underwear as an "interesting" experience. Yet, the importance of the need is revealed when the research team on Laysan describe their clean-up efforts.

The cold underwear should have helped condition him for his next trip - on a fishing boat in the Aleutian Islands. Mark Lundsten is an innovative captain of the "Masonic". His "novel" idea is how to fish in ways allowing a sustainable take. Lundsten is a campaigner among his colleagues for adopting methods to protect birds and turtles from becoming "by-catch". Safina uses the visit to discuss the perils of long-liner fishing, what safeguards are being introduced and how well they're being accepted by fishers around the world. As the episode of the toothbrush demonstrates, it's not only fishermen who threaten the wildlife around us.

The book, while seemingly targeting an audience interested in long-distance commuting seabirds, is a volume we must all take up and learn from. The real point of it is that we must spend more in time and money in developing an understanding of what goes on in the world around us. Among other issues, shark "attacks" on tourists in Hawaii bring immediate and vigorous response by Fisheries and the Coast Guard. One of the teams Safina visits demonstrate that shark movement precludes any likelihood that the slaughtered sharks are the "guilty" party. That shark has almost certainly moved on to a new location. Imparted in sterling prose, with reasoned judgements and a careful balance examining needs, wants and available resources, Safina has produced a superb account. Take up this book to see how research is done and what it can achieve. It may help you in making decisions that will affect your life and that of your children. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

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With one of the planet's most alluring birds as his guide, America's foremost chronicler of marine life captures the embattled ocean world.On a wingspan of up to eleven feet, the albatross can travel as far as five thousand miles without stopping. But until recently, little was known about the albatross's far-flung flights. Now, award-winning author Carl Safina takes us to the higher latitudes to explain what marine animals like the albatross can tell us about the health of our oceans.Eye of the Albatross takes us soaring to locales where whales, sea turtles, penguins, and shearwaters flourish in their own quotidian rhythms. Safina's guide and inspiration is a bird he calls Amelia, whose life he portrays in fascinating detail. Interwoven with recollections of whalers and famous explorers, Eye of the Albatross probes the unmistakable environmental impact of the encounters between man and marine life. Though no place remains untouched by us, fishing restrictions and habitat protection have signaled positive gains for albatrosses and several other marine animals. Safina's portrait combines the authority and drama of Rachel Carson with Peter Matthiessen's perceptive skill. The result is a transforming ride to the ends of the Earth and an urgent appeal to preserve the wild oceans while there is still time.

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