Description:
Like her late compatriot Jacques Cousteau, French marine biologist Anne Collet has traveled the world in search of exotic denizens of the deep. Unlike the apparently imperturbable Cousteau, Collet has no difficulty admitting that her encounters with some of these creatures have terrified her. "Make no sudden movements, and stick together," she instructs her companions while swimming after a female right whale. "She must not think she is surrounded. Animals detest that. As long as she feels safe, we have nothing to fear." Adds Collet, wryly, "I don't know if I managed to persuade them; it was hard enough to convince myself." In this memoir, a scuba-mask view of the world below the waves, Collet recounts her adventures in studying whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals under a variety of conditions, some of them full of peril. That peril, however, concerns all: most of the species she has studied, she warns, are in grave danger, not least because of the all-but-unimpeded use of pelagic trawl nets by commercial deep-sea fishing fleets, which kill five to ten thousand dolphins a year in the Bay of Biscay alone. With their steady disappearance, marine ecosystems begin to unravel, and Collet warns urgently that action must be taken now if the sea--and, by extension, the planet--is to be brought back to health, its terrifying residents included. --Gregory McNamee
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