Product Description

“One of the most delightful natural history studies in decades.” —The Boston Globe

Eye of the Albatross takes us soaring to locales where whales, sea turtles, penguins, and shearwaters flourish in their own quotidian rhythms. Carl Safina’s guide and inspiration is an albatross he calls Amelia, whose life and far-flung flights he describes 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. Safina’s perceptive and authoritative portrait results in a transforming ride to the ends of the Earth for the reader, as well as an eye-opening look at the health of our oceans.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #163430 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In this dazzling volume, Safina, a MacArthur award recipient, recounts his travels to remote portions of the northwest Hawaiian Islands to witness albatross breeding season, during which parent birds fly across entire oceans as much as 25,000 miles to hunt sufficient food to nourish their single chicks. Albatross survival, Safina (Song for the Blue Ocean) shows, is increasingly vulnerable to modern conditions; indeed, the shameful history of albatross exploitation, when the magnificent birds were all but exterminated in some areas for their valued eggs and feathers, is but an early chapter in the struggle against perils that now include entrapment in commercial fishing nets, ingesting plastic trash that washes ashore in vast quantities on their nesting islands and depletion of food stocks due to global warming. By turns rhapsodic, scolding and mystical, the book discusses issues that affect other seabirds, seals, sharks and sea turtles. But the albatross ("a great symphony of flesh, perception, bone, and feathers") remains its primary focus. Clinically minded readers may question Safina's tendency to psychologize animals or introduce mythological elements into his narrative, and some sections of the book resonate with more romantic passion than science. Still, Safina's encyclopedic knowledge and spirited prose provide a stunningly intimate portrait of an environment. (May 14)
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
The recipient of a MacArthur "genius" Fellowship and a Pew Scholar's Award in Conservation and the Environment, Safina (Song for the Blue Ocean) attempts to "tell a story of struggle and hope and the power of sheer persistence and of life's resilience." In narrating this tale, he has chosen as his guide a Laysan albatross named Amelia, "a great symphony of flesh, perception, bone, and feathers, composed of long movements and set to ever-changing rhythms of light, wind, and water." With the author and Amelia, the reader is taken on a tour of the oceans and introduced to many other kinds of ocean wildlife as well. The vice-president for marine conservation at the National Audubon Society, Safina focuses on the qualities of peace and tranquility in nature rather than on the "eat or be eaten" aspect that most people see. The result is a refreshing approach to natural history writing that is recommended for general readers. Mary J. Nickum, Lakewood, CO
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker
The heroine of this powerful tale of marine life in the Pacific is Amelia, a Laysan albatross who was tagged with a satellite transmitter so that biologists could track her movements. Safina, author of the memorable "Song for the Blue Ocean," offers up a remarkable portrait of Amelia as she glides thousands of miles, journeying from tropical waters to sub-Arctic seas, spending almost all of her life in the air. And he describes with equal vividness the ocean across which she travels: fusing ecological history and serious science to great effect, he shows how the delicate interplay between human intervention and natural adaptation affects the lives of seals, sharks, turtles, and seabirds. Although the author is never less than outraged at the damage that humans can cause, his critique is nuanced, and he shows how, in some respects, the ocean is healthier today than it was a century ago. The book goes astray only when he devotes time to the personal lives of his fellow-scientists, whose obsession with albatrosses is far less interesting than the albatrosses themselves.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

A Glimpse at Nature's Wonders
From time to time, Safina does tend to anthropomorphize, but it does make the book more accessible. And at other times he steps back just a little too far from the role he has written for himself. But there is nothing else to criticize in this excellent book.

Five hours northwest of the main Hawaiian Islands by propjet there are series of islands and atolls that are the breeding grounds of tens of thousands of sea birds. Of the many species of birds that breed there, the largest, the one that must be wrapped in the most superlatives, is the Laysan Albatross. And one Laysan Albatross, that Safina names Amelia, is the principle subject and unifying thread of this book.

From Coelridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" to the horrifying pollution of our ocean, Amelia is the eye through which we view her astonishing world. Amelia is tagged with a small satellite transmitter, and Safina includes maps showing the travels Amelia makes to feed herself and her chick. The distances beggar the imagination. Through her eyes and her journeys, Safina touches on the host of issues and breathtaking wonders of the the fauna of the Northwest Hawaiian Islands.

It's a tour de force, and I recommend it to you.

More than just winging it
As a vice-president of Audubon, the founder of their Living Oceans program, a contributor on fishery management policy-making, the author of SONG FOR THE BLUE OCEAN, and an early life as a fisherman, Carl Safina is certainly not simply "winging it" when it comes to discussing oceans and their environmental health.

This book is beautifully written and is a passionate call for us to care for our oceans. It offers all the following: natural history, study of a bird species, travelogue, environmental science, oceanography, cultural and economic commentary, and finally, a geography and history lesson. Starting where he always does, Safina begins with a focus on his main interest - the huge ecosystem that is the worlds oceans. We take the perspective of the masters of the oceanic skies - the albatross - and Safina is creative in using a tagged and satellite-tracked individual bird "Amelia" to give us a unique look through the EYE OF THE ALBATROSS.

Safina is somewhat of a romantic visionary and has a gift for the poetic phrase. The images however are not all about beautiful seascapes, tropical islands and exotic ports-of-call. Hardly. His description of a feeding scene between a mother albatross and her chick at a nesting colony is literally gut-wrenching. After being fed by its parent on regurgigated squid "the chick begs for more. The adult arches her neck and retches again. Nothing comes". Although Safina has a penchant for criticizing human economics and uses this case to do so, we can't help but see his point as he continues. "Slowly comes the surreal sight of a green plastic toothbrush emerging from the bird's gullet. With her neck arched, the mother cannot fully pass the straight brush. She tries several times to disgorge it, but can't." The economic message from the perspective of the albatross seems to be that "consumer culture permeates every watery point on the compass."

There is no doubt that the intention of this book is to evoke emotions that will bring about action to ameliorate environmental conditions. To that extent Safina is a scrupulous scientist and he makes us sit up and take note when he says that in addition to the 80 million tons of sea creatures that fishing annually harvests from the worlds oceans, there is a further 20 million tons of "unwanted" fish, seabirds, and marine mammals that gets "thrown overboard, dead." Safina was instrumental in banning drift-nets and is now working to make fishing grounds "sea-bird-safe". He and others are proposing changes in long-line fishing. In Alaska alone 14,000 sea birds are lost annually when they drown after swallowing baited hooks and get entangled in the nets. A change such as dyeing the bait so that birds can't see it would seem to be a fairly straightforward solution. The labyrinth official, diplomatic, and political obstacle course that must be navigated however means that nothing is simple.

Safina is a steady advocate for change and remains optimistic. He keeps us soaring with our bird guide. Why not, as "almost everything about the albatross is superlative and extreme." We learn that they can live for more than fifty years and over a lifetime can log about four million miles flying. They routinely go on 2,000 mile foraging trips. Wandering is not only the name of the largest of the species (diomedea exulans) it is also the most appropriate adjective to describe these wondrous birds. They can be found from the Antarctic to the far north and frequently fly through both tropical and frigid north Atlantic stormy skies in a single voyage.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable journey and an environmentally educational experience with a unique birds-eye view written by an artistic wordsmith.

it soars
from the May 16, 2002 edition - [...]

By Colin Woodard

Humans and albatrosses have a lot in common. We both live for many decades, possibly a century. Our reproductive patterns are similar. Albatrosses take as long as 13 years to mature, engage in courtships that can last two years or more, and raise a single chick every other year (or three to four years for some species.) Albatrosses, like ourselves, are found from the Antarctic to the Far North and most places in between.

Of course, we spend our time on earth very differently. Albatrosses spend 95 percent of it at sea, usually in flight. They come ashore only to breed and nest, and even then they are constantly flying off on 2,000- to 3,000-mile foraging runs to collect each feeding for their chick. They can fly for many days without stopping, sleeping on the wing, wandering from tropical to subpolar seas in the course of a single foraging run.

Carl Safina wondered what we might learn about the world if we could see it from their perspective. Now, after shadowing these great birds by foot, ship, and satellite, he has painted a beautiful, awe-inspiring tableau of our world as you've never seen it: an interconnected universe of wind and waves, sun-blasted islands, teeming polar seas, broad-winged birds, and the far-reaching effects of civilization.

"Almost everything about the albatross is superlative and extreme," Safina writes. They're huge, with an 11-foot wingspan. Masters of long-distance flight, they use less energy soaring over a stormy sea than they do while sitting quietly on their nests. They endure equatorial heat and ferocious Arctic storms, sometimes on the same feeding trip. And they travel far: By 50 years of age, a typical albatross has logged nearly 4 million miles.

Tracking them, Safina journeys to beaches covered with egg-laying sea turtles, crystalline Pacific waters filled with prowling tiger sharks, and island tern colonies so vast they're likened to "a white-noise cyclone of sound."

But today, albatrosses' lives are tangled up with those of humans. Though their world is far removed from civilization, they're inundated with pesticides, antibiotics, and hormone mimics. They swallow bottle caps and cigarette lighters, become entangled in drift nets, or drown after seizing one of the millions of baited hooks dragged behind fishing vessels every year.

"Eye of the Albatross" relates some unforgettable scenes. At one point, Safina watches an albatross chick feeding from the mouth of its mother, just back from a 2,000-mile foraging trip. The chick gulps down globs of regurgitated squid and fish eggs, but then the mother has difficulty retching up the next serving. "Slowly, the tip - just the tip - of a green plastic toothbrush emerges from the bird's throat," a sight Safina describes as "one of the most piercing things I've ever experienced." The mother, unable to pass this bit of trash, wanders away from her squawking chick.

The lesson, Safina writes, is that there are no longer any places on earth unaffected by man. "No matter what coordinates you choose, from waters polar to solar coral reefs, to the remotest turquoise atoll - no place, no creature remains apart from you and me."

Fortunately, in some places people are starting to correct the situation. Safina visits Midway Atoll, where the military accidentally introduced rats, which bred voraciously and extinguished entire nesting colonies. But since control of Midway passed to the National Wildlife Service, the rats have been eradicated, and the birds are recovering. In Alaska, Safina goes to sea with Mark Lundsten, a commercial fisherman leading the effort to save albatrosses from hooks. Lundsten has found a simple and cost-effective way to reduce albatross mortality by 90 percent with a combination of weights and streamers.

Safina, who earned a PhD studying seabirds, established himself as a leading voice in marine conservation with his first book, "Song for the Blue Ocean," which drew attention to the environmental catastrophe unfolding beneath the waves. "Eye of the Albatross" is an eloquent sequel, a moving depiction of how interconnected life on this planet truly is.

* Colin Woodard is author of 'Ocean's End: Travels Through Endangered Seas' (Basic).

from the May 16, 2002 edition - [...]