In The Fragile Edge, the documentary filmmaker and deep-sea diver Julia Whitty paints a mesmerizing, scientifically rich portrait of teeming coral reefs and sea life in the South Pacific. She takes us literally beneath the surface of the usual travel narrative, in an underwater equivalent of an African big-game safari. Hammerhead sharks rule a cascading chain of extraordinary creatures, from eagle rays to reef sharks, as the sound of courting humpback whales reverberates through the deep.
Inspiring for both armchair and expert divers, The Fragile Edge reveals how science can extend our understanding of unfathomable waters, opening our eyes to the threats facing coral reefs and explaining why these fragile oases are vital to human survival. In this passionate, spiritual narrative of her adventures in the big blue, Julia Whitty emerges as one of our finest writers on the mystery, beauty, and fragility of the undersea world.
Inspiring for both armchair and expert divers, The Fragile Edge reveals how science can extend our understanding of unfathomable waters, opening our eyes to the threats facing coral reefs and explaining why these fragile oases are vital to human survival. In this passionate, spiritual narrative of her adventures in the big blue, Julia Whitty emerges as one of our finest writers on the mystery, beauty, and fragility of the undersea world.
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“The product of a scientist’s mind, a sociologist’s eye, a Zen Buddhist’s soul, and a poet’s heart, The Fragile Edge is at once a natural history, a call to action, a love song, and a prayer.” (O, the Oprah Magazine )
“Whitty’s prose is supple and scientifically informed, and her intimacies with the ocean’s curiosities captivate.” (New York Times Book Review )
"A marvelous love story of an affair with saltwater and allits mysteries." (Bil McKibben )
“Whitty’s prose is supple and scientifically informed, and her intimacies with the ocean’s curiosities captivate.” (New York Times Book Review )
"A marvelous love story of an affair with saltwater and allits mysteries." (Bil McKibben )
About the Author
Julia Whitty is the award-winning author of the short story collection A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga. Her cover articles have appeared in Harper’s Magazine and Mother Jones, where she is an environmental correspondent and blogger for the Blue Marble. She has produced seventy documentaries for PBS, National Geographic, the Discovery Channel, and others. Whitty lives in northern California.
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More About the Author
JULIA WHITTY's first book on oceans, The Fragile Edge, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal Award, the PEN USA Award, and the Kiriyama Prize. Her cover articles have appeared in Harper's Magazine and Mother Jones, where she is an environmental correspondent and blogger at Blue Marble.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
By Aquadiver
Format:Hardcover
Most people think of coral reefs as part of the tropical paradise they seek when they jet off to "the islands" to get away from the cold of winter. Reefs are associated with palm trees and blue water and sun tans and romance. Biologists and oceanographers know that reefs are the most diverse communities on the planet, built into enormous structures by some of the smallest and most interesting animals on the planet. In many ways, coral reefs are the basis of life in the ocean.
But in the South Pacific, reefs and the islands they surround and support are in deep trouble (no pun intended). Julia Whitty has been filming reefs for 15 years, so she knows them well, and she has seen their deterioration first hand. Now she has turned her considerable talents to writing a book, and if there's any justice, this book will do for coral what Rachel Carson's books did for the oceans and shores nearly half a century ago.
"The Fragile Edge: Diving and Other Adventures in the South Pacific" is a three-part work that unflinchingly examines the world of coral reefs from three perspectives, each set on a different island in French Polynesia. In part one, she describes the atoll of Rangiroa from the perspective of a diver. Writing about the underwater world is no easy task.
Photographers and film-makers have always done a better job of describing the life aquatic. Perhaps that is because it is such a visual experience that most divers perceive it only from the right side of the brain, so it's easier to capture and present great images in lieu of thousands of words. Whitty has managed to capture the experience with words as powerful and colorful and well-composed as any photo or video clip she has ever made.
But her descriptions are not just artful. They are well grounded in science. She knows the biology of the reef and the intricate web of relationships in the coral ecosystem. The reader can learn with a sense of awe.
Part 2, Whitty moves to the dying atoll of Funafuti. This is no paradise. She takes a room in a guesthouse owned by a terminally alcoholic German expat and his wife Emily, a nurse who works for the atoll's local government. Funafuti is devoid of tourists and is rapidly losing its only source of economic support -- the reef around it -- to overfishing and pollution. Western influence has turned the formerly self-sufficient island into a throwaway society that is in deep denial about the threats surrounding it from all sides, especially the rising of the sea as far away glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland turn liquid. Even in that, Funafuti is a victim of Western influence as the locals choose to believe Australian denials that the sea level is rising, in spite of the evidence in front of them.
In the final part, Whitty visits Mo'orea, where she introduces the reader to the inhabitants of the island's lagoon and reef in lyrical but unsentimental prose. From her encounter with a pelagic octopus to the tense, inevitable demise of a pod of spinner dolphins when inconvenient winds trap them inside the reef, where they normally rest, but have no food, Whitty shares her sharp observations and insights, flavored with references to Hindu mythology (she hints at having a South Asian heritage) to try to explain states of mind that humans and some animals might actually have in common.
Whitty concludes this astonishing work with an epilogue set on Marlon Brando's private atoll Teti'aroa, where she contemplates the evidence of the planet's demise and consoles herself with the lesson from geology that reefs have come and gone throughout the history of the Earth.
"Whatever role we might play in the next great extinction will surely have less effect on the tenacious reemergence of reef-builders than it will on us. Reefs, we know, can survive without us. The opposite may not be true."
Julia Whitty has a lovely voice, but it's a voice bringing dire warnings that we had better heed soon.
But in the South Pacific, reefs and the islands they surround and support are in deep trouble (no pun intended). Julia Whitty has been filming reefs for 15 years, so she knows them well, and she has seen their deterioration first hand. Now she has turned her considerable talents to writing a book, and if there's any justice, this book will do for coral what Rachel Carson's books did for the oceans and shores nearly half a century ago.
"The Fragile Edge: Diving and Other Adventures in the South Pacific" is a three-part work that unflinchingly examines the world of coral reefs from three perspectives, each set on a different island in French Polynesia. In part one, she describes the atoll of Rangiroa from the perspective of a diver. Writing about the underwater world is no easy task.
Photographers and film-makers have always done a better job of describing the life aquatic. Perhaps that is because it is such a visual experience that most divers perceive it only from the right side of the brain, so it's easier to capture and present great images in lieu of thousands of words. Whitty has managed to capture the experience with words as powerful and colorful and well-composed as any photo or video clip she has ever made.
But her descriptions are not just artful. They are well grounded in science. She knows the biology of the reef and the intricate web of relationships in the coral ecosystem. The reader can learn with a sense of awe.
Part 2, Whitty moves to the dying atoll of Funafuti. This is no paradise. She takes a room in a guesthouse owned by a terminally alcoholic German expat and his wife Emily, a nurse who works for the atoll's local government. Funafuti is devoid of tourists and is rapidly losing its only source of economic support -- the reef around it -- to overfishing and pollution. Western influence has turned the formerly self-sufficient island into a throwaway society that is in deep denial about the threats surrounding it from all sides, especially the rising of the sea as far away glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland turn liquid. Even in that, Funafuti is a victim of Western influence as the locals choose to believe Australian denials that the sea level is rising, in spite of the evidence in front of them.
In the final part, Whitty visits Mo'orea, where she introduces the reader to the inhabitants of the island's lagoon and reef in lyrical but unsentimental prose. From her encounter with a pelagic octopus to the tense, inevitable demise of a pod of spinner dolphins when inconvenient winds trap them inside the reef, where they normally rest, but have no food, Whitty shares her sharp observations and insights, flavored with references to Hindu mythology (she hints at having a South Asian heritage) to try to explain states of mind that humans and some animals might actually have in common.
Whitty concludes this astonishing work with an epilogue set on Marlon Brando's private atoll Teti'aroa, where she contemplates the evidence of the planet's demise and consoles herself with the lesson from geology that reefs have come and gone throughout the history of the Earth.
"Whatever role we might play in the next great extinction will surely have less effect on the tenacious reemergence of reef-builders than it will on us. Reefs, we know, can survive without us. The opposite may not be true."
Julia Whitty has a lovely voice, but it's a voice bringing dire warnings that we had better heed soon.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By Karen Laws
Format:Hardcover
"All day we have been observing the surgeonfish..." Julia Whitty begins, and from that first sentence onward, the reader of "The Fragile Edge" is one of the party. Whitty is there with you, chuckling good-naturedly at the antics of an undersea creature or (more likely) of those crazy humans topside. In one of my favorite moments, an account of how the funky old hotel with its peculiar charms has been taken over by new owners whose pampered guests pay $500/night to lounge by the infinity pool is interrupted just at the moment when you think she might succumb to sentimentality or some other curmudgeonly temptation by her confession that, "I like the pool, too." Similarly, Whitty clearly and firmly presents her environmental concerns without, so to speak, wallowing in them. Instead of putting the book aside because you're tired of hearing about how the end of the world is at hand, you're motivated to keep swimming along with a guide whose curiosity and expertise extend to the natural history of molecular plants and animals, as well as the more glamorous sharks and dolphins, from Western science to Eastern metaphysics, and from dissolving atolls and bleached corals to the raw fish marinated in coconut milk served at a Tuvaluan wedding reception. Finally it's her love of the coral reefs she has come to know over many years of diving and study, rather than her fear that global warming will destroy them, that Whitty is most eager to share.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wondrous, If Vicarious, Adventures In The Deep Thanks To Julia Whitty
June 1, 2007
Format:Hardcover
What a treat to enter the underwater worlds of the South Pacific with documentary filmaker Julia Whitty as your guide! The writing is absolutely gorgeous: "The humphead wrasse who the Tahitians call mara and the French call Napoleon is an imposing fish up to seven feet long and four hundred and twenty pounds, with an overhanging forehead, thick lips, and a blue body overlaid with squiggly patterns of green and yellow that look like the inside of a crcuit board." It is easy enough to get lost in the descriptions of life in the reef, up close and personal, but Whitty doesn't stop there. She brings in philosophy, Darwin, yoga, the history of the people on the islands she decribes, and Buddhism, as she observes life in the reefs, so that the reader feels she is not merely observing what's before her but contemplating it, trying to understand its mysteries. She makes the more humorous sides of this underwater world come alive, all the while getting her message across of the dire straights the worlds coral reefs are currently in. She has a vast knowledge of fish and reef life but makes it accessable, even providing a glossary at the back for the layperson so you come away with new knowledge about worlds you might otherwise never know. I loved this book!!!
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
The 4th Dimension
Julia takes us to a 4th or perhaps 5th dimension in this book, as concerns her writing ability and style.... Read more
Published 14 months ago by David A. Marks
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very well done.
I sought out this book after reading "Deep Blue Home: An Intimate Ecology of Our Wild Ocean" by Julia Whitty. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Ken
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Fragile Edge
I'm not a diver, just a fan of writing. I was looking for some good nature writing, and this definitely fit the bill. Read more
Published on November 29, 2010 by Stephen Quinn
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best and most effective overview of the implications of global warming
I truly admire Julia Whitty's writing style and ability to transport me emotively into the world of the South Pacific ocean and to articulate so clearly why we should all be... Read more
Published on January 11, 2009 by Jan Schiller
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Fragile Edge
The Fragile Edge by Julia Whitty combines a science journalist's capacity for a precise and illuminating description of undersea flora and fauna encountered in remoter parts of the... Read more
Published on December 29, 2007 by Tim Moses
5.0 out of 5 stars
Joy and Sadness
I grew up in this world of tropical coral reefs and sharks and tiny bright fish but that was over fifty years ago. Read more
Published on August 15, 2007 by Ronald Mayo
5.0 out of 5 stars
Edginess Long Overdue
Ten years ago I had the opportunity to snorkel with a marine biologist in East Africa. He was studying the bleaching of coral reefs and his worries about the future of marine life... Read more
Published on May 24, 2007 by Eric Goldscheider
5.0 out of 5 stars
magical
Wow, i have never been to the south seas and I am not even a diver, but this book absolutely transported me through the waves to the world below the surface. Read more
Published on May 22, 2007 by Karen R. Jones
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unique Insight
The extraordinary thing about Julia Whitty's book is that it allows the reader a unique view into the underwater world of the coral reef. Read more
Published on May 17, 2007 by Hardy Jones
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