Customer Reviews

Watching Giants: The Secret Lives of Whales

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Professor Elin Kelsey has written 20 inter-linked essays focusing on the science of whale motherhoood. "Whales, I have discovered, are extremely dedicated mothers. They have to be. There are no safe places to leave one's baby to rest or feed in the ocean." Her essays are informed by her own role as a mother of two young children, and she draws many parallels among large female mammals -- humans, whales, elephants, for example -- who devote significant parts of their lives to raising their young.

She "travels to many parts of the world and interviews scientists directly." She adds information from books, research papers and the web to produce her well written essays, and provides an excellent set of end notes filled with resources for further study.

A few of the fascinating details that fill this book include:

Christopher Clark at Cornell tracks whales using computer images of whale's voices: "I can watch cohorts of humback whales off the coast of Norway, singers, that are separated by ten or twenty or thirty miles. These whales move as a collection -- an acoustic herd -- over days and weeks. If you and I were whale watching, we would be totally unaware that this is going on."

"Whale milk is among the richest on earth ... 30 to 55 percent fat. A blue whale mother produces 485 pounds of this superfatty milk each day. She nurses her calf for six months, transferring more than 88,000 pounds of milk to her calf."

Humpback whales produce bubble nets to corral fish "big enough to enclose a four story house. ... bubble netting is like a team sport in formation and the plays called by the captain change depending on what's happening in the game. Bubble nets vary in size and shape depending on which humpback whale is blowing the bubbles, how many whales are involved in the hunt, and what kinds of fish they are hunting."

Kelsey describes how whale calves nurse. It has been thought that they suckle through their mouths. But Shane Nero observed that "none of the sperm whale calf nursing sessions he saw looked like that. 'What we saw every time was blowhole to nipple.'"

Kelsey has many other fascinating insights into the lives of whales: the adaptive value of menopause and the importance of long lived granny whales, mating patterns, bonding between mother and calf, and much much more.

The book is well written, the photographs are beautiful and informative, and the end notes add a tremendous depth to the essays. This is one of the very best nature books I've ever read.

Robert C. Ross 2008

This book is in many ways a collection of superb essays that read like dispatches from the frontiers of whale science, including current thoughts on whale intelligence, homosexuality in dolphins, the culture of whales, and how best to save whales. However, at the center of these probing investigations are the roles of mothers and their crucial importance to understanding the big picture. Filled with insights. Highly recommended.
-- Erich Hoyt, Senior Research Fellow, WDCS, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society; Director, Far East Russia Orca Project; Author, Creatures of the Deep, The Earth Dwellers and Marine Protected Areas for Whales, Dolphins & Porpoises

Perhaps I misunderstood what this book was going to be about. I may not have read the reviews carefully enough. What I *thought* was that this book would be about the secret life of whales.

Sure, I learned something of the secret life of whales, but this was gleaned only after flipping through all the mind-numbing information on the author's children, Kip and Esme, how the honey-tongued local waiter tended to make women's thoughts leap instantly to sex, and what a trial it is to get a room in an inn when you don't speak much Spanish and they don't accept plastic. And so on and so forth.

I am not sure if Kelsey was trying to pad out the book, or adopt a girly coffee-time chat style (she called whale faeces whale 'poop', constantly, I could hardly bear it), or if she was trying to draw parallels between Kip and Esme's toileting habits and whales' 'poop'.

All I wanted was the whales. And I wanted an adult discussion of whales. Largely, I didn't get it. (Kelsey didn't have to talk down to me. Among many other examples, she didn't have to keep calling whale faeces whale 'poop'.)

Discussion of whales was largely confined to the Gulf of California, which was also acutely disappointing. Whales elsewhere are referred to, but why not include them in the overall discussion? I just felt that the author's wealth of knowledge was confined to one thing ... whales in the Gulf of California.

Kelsey also had a heavy conservation agenda. Many chapters/essays given over to her conservation agenda. This is fine, but I just wanted whales.

In summary, *not* a book on the secret life of whales, and possibly not even aimed at adults. Some whale life is discussed, but that only highlights its intense lack throughout most of the book.

I think the book should be re-titled, and I think the book's description should more adequately explain what this book is about. I also disliked the author's girly chatty style.

This was just not what I thought it was going to be. Acutely disappointing. If whales are what you want, be aware that much of this book is not about whales. I would not recommend it.

This is a great book that will allow you to better appreciate whales. It consists of short essays focused on amazing aspects of whale behavior or biology. For example, in one essay Kelsey describes a hunting technique humpback whales use known as bubble-netting. In another, she discusses current research suggesting that blue whales can actually hear the ocean processes that cause mass krill swarms.

I normally do not like it when authors insert their personal lives into books about wildlife, however Kelsey proves to be an exception to this rule. Her personal anecdotes help make larger points about the contrast between whale behavior and humans, or the fragility of the ecosystem. I also appreciated her focus on whales as mothers and families, which is often missing from wildlife stories.

Kelsey's essays focus almost exclusively on whales in the Pacific on the California coast. She has a lot to work with and there seems to be a lot of research in this one area. However, as she herself notes, whales behavior differently in different places. Therefore, I hope she or someone else will consider writing a similar book.

Elin Kelsey has taken a different approach to studying whales, and a different approach in writing this book. She seems to be a scientist utterly fascinated by the culture & psychology of whales - why else would she compare whale behavior to her own menopause or interactions with humans?

Having said that, I found that I could hardly put the book down - I only reluctantly laid it down at night when my eyes refused to stay open. I have long been fascinated by whales, but everything I've ever read before was superficial stuff - the fact that a blue whale weighs 100 tons, or that Gray whales like humans. It has been a long time since I was touched by a book the way I was touched by this one. As a child growing up in San Diego, I wanted to be a marine biologist. Many moves later, and finding myself living in the desert, I didn't pursue the dream - instead I focused on what seemed a more practical choice.

This book, however, has reinvigorated my interest in marine biology. There's no telling where it will take me, just like there's no telling what scientists will discover next about these fantastic mammals that populate our planet's oceans.

If for nothing more than general curiosity about the chapter titled "Let's talk about sex, Baby", pick up this book & read it - if you have any interest at all in these enormous creatures, you'll be well rewarded by reading this book.

Dr. Kelsey has written a thoroughly researched and captivating book. Her writing is compelling. She skillfully guides the reader through factual data using humor and anecdotal stories. A great read for both biology majors and lovers of nature.

In Watching Giants, Elin Kelsey presents information gleaned from dozens of interviews with eminent scientists and other whale experts in an effort to make whales more understandable. This effort alone makes the book worth reading. But Ms. Kelsey extends her thinking much farther and communicates that understanding the lives of whales has implications for her as a human being, as a mother, as a responsible citizen of the Earth. In language that is accessible and highly personal, she conveys her belief that grasping the scope and scale of the lives of these ocean giants can inpire us to recognize our better selves. Some of the stories are funny; some are serious. All of them offer unique and remarkable perspectives on whales and life. Please read this book!

What's so interesting to me about this book is that I thought I knew so much about whales. How could I not, I live by the pacific ocean and see them swim by. Now I know how little any of us know and what it is like to be a whale researcher. It has opened my eyes to the world of whales and scientists and best of all from a woman and a mother's point of view. The world of whales is just too big to know easily. Thank you Elin Kelsey.

This is less a 'book' and more a compilation of wonderful and well-told stories about whales and dolphins, each one a sort of essay examining a different species or topic. Kelsey writes beautifully and the book is compulsively readable, and very enjoyable at that. What I also thought was great (despite being a male in my 20's with no children) is that she knits the various stories together with the theme of motherhood, a little-examined side of cetaceans. She dwells at length on lactation strategies, mothers bonding together to protect and 'educate' their young, and the arduous "single mother" lifestyle required of many species. It is a heartwarming and, so far as I know, unique perspective for a book on cetaceans. Many of the 'episodes' involve visits to researchers in the field and are told more as anecdotes (with lots of scientific research in the endnotes to back up claims) as opposed to a dry, factual account.

I take one star off only because if you've been into cetaceans for any length of time there won't be a whole lot that's new here, other than the inventive perspective (whales-as-mothers) itself. You won't be surprised to read about humpback bubble-netting on acoustical tracking for the 18th time. On the other hand there are some shocking factoids within that I really had never thought of before, such as that the number one killer of dolphins today is our abysmally destructive fishing methods - the number of dolphins killed annually as 'by-catch' numbers in the millions!

All in all an endearing and enjoyable read. Well done.

The book offers an interesting view of whales through the lens of motherhood and the unknown. We still know very little about these giant beasts. They spend most of the time underwater, beyond our realm of study and research.

For example, as the book points out, a blue whale opening its mouth to take in a school of krill is the biggest biomechanical event to happen on the planet. The scale of a whale's life is well beyond the scale of humans.

But they are parents and they have families. We are still trying to figure out how that works.