Underwater to Get Out of the Rain: A Love Affair With the Sea [Paperback]

Trevor Norton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 29, 2007

On a hot summer's day there could be no quicker transport to the seaside than Trevor Norton's cool and entrancing account of a lifetime's adventures under or near the water. Norton's eye for the bizarre, amazing, and beautiful inhabitants of the oceans, and the eccentric characters who work, study, and live by the shore make his book a wonder-filled experience. An intrepid diver and distinguished scientist, Norton's writing is self-deprecating, very funny, and full of wry and intriguing anecdotes; he is an unfailingly delightful companion. Whether his setting is a bed of jewel anemones in an Irish lough, a giant California cavern shared with sea lions, a mildewed research station, or the glittering coral gardens of Sharm el Sheikh, his captivating prose always finds the mark. Sometimes following the shoreline with earlier beachcombers such as Darwin, John Steinbeck, and George Orwell, Norton also takes the reader to depths where the shapes of creatures living without sunlight defy imagination. Admirers of the gorgeous detail of Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us will revel in Norton's writing, his observations, and irreverent wit.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. This delightfully wry account of a lifetime enchanted by the sea should enshrine marine biologist Norton in the pantheon of sea-struck pioneers he brilliantly profiled in his earlier Stars Beneath the Sea. Norton details a love affair that began in his hometown of Whitley Bay, a fading English resort town, where he one day dove into the water and discovered a "fresh and alive sea" that was "everything that the land wasn't." Though he'd been a less-than-average student, his newfound love propelled him to undergraduate and graduate work and then to a life full of oceanographic adventures from the Canary Islands to Sweden and Yemen. Whether discussing the sea lions of Southern California or the coral gardens of Sharm el Sheikh, Norton writes in a charming, tongue-in-cheek style. He is equally adept at elucidating the politics behind the pollution he finds in places such as the Philippines—where fishermen have been allowed to dynamite and poison coral reefs—as he is at illuminating the beauty of what others might consider odd, such as the "magical properties" of slime as used by the limpets off the Isle of Man. (June 1)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker

At the age of fourteen, after a Hans Hass TV show in which Hass's wife peeled and ate a banana under water, Norton headed to the bay in his Northumberland home town and plunged into the cold, murky water, deciding that this "was the real world." In this beautifully written combination of memoir and natural history, Norton, a retired professor of marine biology, recalls night explorations in kelp forests among transparent shrimp visible only because of food moving through their guts, and celebrates unusual sea cultures, such as that of the ama, in Japan—women who free-dive for abalone shells in temperatures so cold that they lose half their body fat each winter. Norton's style is whimsical but tempered by a passionate concern for the ocean's vulnerability to human impact.
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker - click here to subscribe. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (May 29, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306815362
• ISBN-13: 978-0306815362
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,281,366 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Funny, Informative Life of a Marine Biologist, June 2, 2006

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Underwater to Get Out of the Rain: A Love Affair with the Sea (Hardcover)

Trevor Norton is one of those lucky men who picked up an enthusiasm when he was a boy, nurtured it through his schooling, and kept at it through a happy lifetime of academic involvement within it. In _Underwater to Get Out of the Rain: A Love Affair with the Sea_ (Da Capo), he lets us in on why he has spent as much of his life as he could under the water, and whether you want to join him there or not, he does make a convincing case for a life passionately and usefully spent. After all, how many other experts on kelp do you know who may have changed the tactics of a war? In 1982, when British troops were dispatched to the Falklands because Argentina had invaded them, Norton was called up by an official from the Ministry of Defense: "'Are you the seaweed chappie?' said a man with a pound of plums in his mouth. 'Just a wee enquiry. I've been led to believe there are exceptionally large seaweeds off the coast of the erm... Falkland Islands.'" Norton confirms this, and explains that stems of the kelp might tangle the propellers of landing craft, but that there would be less of it in sheltered coves and inlets. "Really, by Jove, is that so?" came the reply, and so perhaps kelp and Norton's advice determined the landing places. It's one of countless odd and amusing stories, dished out with plenty of fascinating marine biology, in a thoroughly readable and enchanting book.

Norton had been an unruly child, "but as I learned more about living things, I became too busy to be bad." And he used his fascination for the sea to power his academic efforts (he is now Professor of Marine Biology at the University of Liverpool). The many chapters here cover Norton's underwater life all over the world, and convey his fascination with the creatures he sees. Barnacle mating, for instance, is extraordinary: "The bold, bisexual barnacle has a prick up its sleeve; its enormous penis is three or four times taller than the shell. Out it leaps, thin and arching, and dips into an adjacent barnacle as neat as a nib into a surprised inkwell." The creatures are amazing, and so are the odd people who come into Norton's life, or historical figures who inspired him. Pages here are devoted to Ed Ricketts, the marine biologist of Cannery Row and John Steinbeck's pal. Norton describes Liverpool in the sixties, but explains, "People have often asked me what it was like to be there. If only I'd known it was going to become 'Liverpool in the sixties' I'd have paid more attention." It was where he met his wife (who has done the charming illustrations for this book): "She was obviously bright and I would like to say that I was first attracted by her intellect, but in the age of miniskirts there was so much to admire that I got distracted."

Norton realizes his own good luck in timing. "Yesterday's expedition is today's excursion and tomorrow's package tour." He has been able to see pristine reefs and to write about them, but then faces the dilemma that since complex reef ecology is damaged by human visits, to celebrate the beauty of a specific reef is to "expose it to the dangers of excessive admiration." The coral reef state park in Florida, for instance, gets thousands of visitors a day, as well as damage by pollution and careless boat usage. It isn't the only instance Norton describes of the encroachment of the modern world into the oceans. Overfishing has changed the oceans forever, with much bigger nets, spotter planes to locate schools of fish, and sonar mounted on the nets to guide the skipper in enclosing his prey. "Fish have as much chance of evading a net as a tree has of dodging the ax." Especially distressing is his description of ruin within the waters of the Philippines by such fishing techniques as dynamiting and poisoning by bleach and cyanide. This is far too lively and cheery a book, however, to be overcome by such reflections. Norton is a witty writer with a fund of good stories to tell and a delight in the surprises of the human and the marine world, a delight that any reader will enjoy.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A joyous celebration as well as a scientific investigation and a fine leisure read, August 16, 2006

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Underwater to Get Out of the Rain: A Love Affair with the Sea (Hardcover)

As a young boy author Trevor Norton was fascinated by water: a fascination which would continue into adulthood, and which serves as the foundation of experience of UNDERWATER TO GET OUT OF THE RAIN, a blend of natural history and memoir. Norton's fascination would lead him to travel oceans of the world, to study the science and history of oceans, and to probe both the surface of the ocean and the world of a submerged laboratory. UNDERWATER TO GET OUT OF THE RAIN is a joyous celebration as well as a scientific investigation and a fine leisure read.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rara avis: an eloquent marine biologist, August 16, 2006

By 

Pierre Haas "eclectic reader" (houston TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Underwater to Get Out of the Rain: A Love Affair with the Sea (Hardcover)

Trevor Norton is a very gifted man: he is undoubtedly a first-rate scientist, who enjoys his profession inmensely, but he has other virtues as well. First, he can write: every page is elegantly crafted, with a knack for the telling detail and a gift for the essential. In a few pages you are there with him, becoming acquainted with an underwater scene, or with a long-deceased biologist. Second, Norton is interested in everything, from science to history, reminding us how fascinating life itself can be, if only we care to look. And he has a sense of humor.