Voyage of the Turtle: In Pursuit of the Earth's Last Dinosaur by Carl Safina
The story of an ancient sea turtle and what its survival says about our future, from the award-winning writer and naturalist Though nature is indifferent to the struggles of her creatures, the human effect on them is often premeditated. The distressing decline of sea turtles in Pacific waters and their surprising recovery in the Atlantic illuminate what can go both wrong and right from our interventions, and teach us the lessons that can be applied to restore health to the world's oceans and its creatures. As Voyage of the Turtle, Carl Safina's compelling natural history adventure makes clear, the fate of the astonishing leatherback turtle, whose ancestry can be traced back 125 million years, is in our hands. Writing with verve and color, Safina describes how he and his colleagues track giant pelagic turtles across the world's oceans and onto remote beaches of every continent. As scientists apply lessons learned in the Atlantic and Caribbean to other endangered seas, Safina follows leatherback migrations, including a thrilling journey from Monterey, California, to nesting grounds on the most remote beaches of Papua, New Guinea. The only surviving species of its genus, family, and suborder, the leatherback is an evolutionary marvel: a reptile that behaves like a warm-blooded dinosaur, an ocean animal able to withstand colder water than most fishes and dive deeper than any whale. In his peerless prose, Safina captures the delicate interaction between these gentle giants and the humans who are finally playing a significant role in their survival. Magnificent . . . A joyful, hopeful book. Safina gives us ample reasons to be enthralled by this astonishing ancient animal-and ample reasons to care. - The Los Angeles Times Editorial Reviews Carl Safina is like some extraordinary astronaut who goes into space and comes back with fantastic tales of other planets and the creatures who inhabit them. Except that the marvelous planet is our own. This is a story of stoicism and wonder that will make the oceans seem that much richer to all who read it. -Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy That remarkable voice for the marine realm, Carl Safina, reveals the riveting tale of that most extraordinary creature, the Leatherback Turtle, overlain with the drama and hope of the battle for its conservation. No naturalist or planetary citizen can hope to be complete without Voyage of the Turtle. A fabulous book. -Thomas E. Lovejoy, President, The Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment - From the Publisher MacArthur fellow and John Burroughs Award-winner Safina (Song for the Blue Ocean) presents an impassioned account of the plight of ocean-dwelling turtles, especially the largest, the leatherback, the closest thing we have to a living dinosaur. Leatherbacks, which can weigh over a ton, range the oceans to nesting sites on beaches along the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards. Safina travels to many of these sites, bringing the reader into the turtles' world as he describes how the females leave the ocean, cross sandy beaches, dig huge pits using their flippers as spades, lay their eggs and then creep back into the sea. He shows how precarious this world is; nature's dangers are always present, but it's human activities that threaten the turtles with extinction: poaching, longline fishing nets in which the turtles can drown and depletion of the turtles' food supply due to overfishing and global warming. There are remedies, such as intensive nest-saving programs, but these take time to implement, and time is running out for the turtles. Safina's eloquent book is a battle cry in the struggle for the survival of one of the world's most beautiful and endangered creatures. Maps. (June 27) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. - Publishers Weekly MacArthur Fellow Safina introduces us to the leatherback turtle, which has been around in some form or other for 125 million years but is now -endangered. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. - Library Journal Adult/High School-This book is Safina's personal journal of the migration of the leatherback, loggerhead, and green turtles. These aquatic creatures of reptilian descent wander throughout the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Eventually they die in captivity because they don't understand boundaries. This limitless ocean life is in jeopardy due to long-line fishing, poaching, and commercial development along the beaches of Trinidad and Mexico, where they nest. The author is passionate about conservation efforts, describing the eco-tourist work of Nature Seekers and the legal efforts of Oceana in protecting the now critically endangered leatherback turtles. More than a chronicle of attempts to save the species, Turtle captures the physical magnitude of these ancient creatures and the repetitive calm of their endless travels. Safina's simple and deeply personal style captures both the mystery of the leatherbacks' life cycle and the need to develop a global understanding of their plight to survive. This title will quickly become a part of the classroom libraries of those teaching life science and ecology.-Brigeen Radoicich, Fresno County Office of Education, CA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. - School Library Journal
Publication Details
Title:
Author(s):
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Binding: Paperback
Published by: Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.: , 2009
Edition:
ISBN: 9780805083187 | 0805083189
416 pages.
Book Condition: Good
Cover worn
Pickup available at Book Express Warehouse
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