Listening To Whales

Zusatztext 40574966 Informationen zum Autor Born and raised in Connecticut, Alexandra Morton began her career in marine mammal research in 1976, when she moved to California to work for noted dolphin researcher, Dr. John C. Lilly. Since 1984 she has lived on the isolated central British Columbia coast, where she studies and records the language and habits of the various pods of orcas that swim the waters there. Klappentext In Listening to Whales , Alexandra Morton shares spellbinding stories about her career in whale and dolphin research and what she has learned from and about these magnificent mammals. In the late 1970s, while working at Marineland in California, Alexandra pioneered the recording of orca sounds by dropping a hydrophone into the tank of two killer whales. She recorded the varied language of mating, childbirth, and even grief after the birth of a stillborn calf. At the same time she made the startling observation that the whales were inventing wonderful synchronized movements, a behavior that was soon recognized as a defining characteristic of orca society. In 1984, Alexandra moved to a remote bay in British Columbia to continue her research with wild orcas. Her recordings of the whales have led her to a deeper understanding of the mystery of whale echolocation, the vocal communication that enables the mammals to find their way in the dark sea. A fascinating study of the profound communion between humans and whales, this book will open your eyes anew to the wonders of the natural world.Chapter 1 Some nights I hear whales in my dreams. They start off distant like the sound of wind in the trees but gradually pick up to the point where they’re all I can hear. Most times I can make out which pod is calling—the sisters, transients, G clan, or any of a dozen other orcas I’ve spent nearly a quarter of a century listening to. On a good night it’s the exquisite dialect specific to the family of the fifty-four-year-old matriarch Tsitika, a series of rippling harmonics so perfect it imparts a deep sense of peace in me, like a shuddering sigh. Some nights I wake from one of these dreams and find it hasn’t been a dream at all. I trundle downstairs in stocking feet, put my ear to the hydrophone speaker, and hear Tsitika calling to her children. I press the record button on my tape machine and note the time and date in the sound log. And so begins another day of work. In the kelp bed floating outside my window, a hydrophone dangles down 15 feet into the water of Cramer Passage. A black cable snakes through the kelp, up the rocky beach, through the salal brush, around my kale garden, past the greenhouse and chicken coop, and up through the floorboards into my house, which is perched on a low bluff on the western coast of Canada. I begin my mornings with a strong cup of coffee at my desk, writing, entering data, or sorting through black-and-white photos of dorsal fins. If there are no whales that day, the first sound I hear is often the crackle of shrimp coming alive with the lightening of the sky. Sometimes I hear otters chirping or dolphins letting loose those high-pitched twitters that make them sound like monkeys on helium. The hydrophone doesn’t discriminate. More often than not, I hear the scream of outboard motors. The community in which I live, Echo Bay, has no roads. Everyone gets around by boat. To study a wild animal, you must adapt your life to its rhythm. It’s the only way you’ll increase your chances of encountering your subject, and perhaps more important, it’s the only way you’ll begin to understand how your subject encounters the world. We landlocked humans experience our surroundings primarily through our eyes: land and vision. A killer whale’s aquatic world comes to it almost exclusively through its sense of hearing: water and sound. Living in Echo Bay has put me in a world as close as I can come to the kille...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Alexandra Morton
• Editore: Ballantine
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 01.06.2004
• EAN: 9780345442888
• ISBN: 978-0-345-44288-8
• Pagine: 336
• Dimensioni: 156 mm x 235 mm x 18 mm
• Categoria: Guide e manuali > Natura