Eye of the Albatross: Visions of Hope and Survival by Carl Safina

From the Publisher

“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.

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.

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 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

An awestruck yet intelligent study of the great sea bird and its environs, by award-winning ocean ecologist Safina (Song for the Blue Ocean, 1998). Basing himself on a Hawaiian atoll called French Frigate Shoals, the author observes the activities of Amelia, a Laysan Albatross. She's nesting as the book opens, and it is not long before her chick is hatched. Amelia and her long-term mate flash off on food runs, some as long as 2,500 miles (she has been rigged with a transmitter to track her movements). Safina tries to get into the bird's head as she reads the ocean's surface on her long glide for food. For the most part, this strategy produces an enjoyable travelogue layered with material on albatross biology and behavior, plus perhaps more material than necessary about its role as a literary metaphor. The goods on Amelia aren't really enough to sustain an entire book, so Safina embellishes the proceedings with accounts of time spent with scientists and fishermen in pursuit of seals, sharks, turtles, halibut, sablefish, and other members of the albatross's extended environmental family. His pacing is right, and the various narrative strands are well intertwined. Faults include ill-considered lyrical forays ("Beneath the daily overburden, our truer nature is this wandering spirit on expansive wings, hungering for a chance to search new horizons, hurtle along") and an irksome tendency to consecrate the albatross ("Being near these birds touches people with something so profound it seems spiritual"). But Safina's condemnation of the myriad factors contributing to the destruction of its habitat, from egg and feather hunters to global warming, is right on target. A scene in which an albatrosschokes on a plastic toothbrush points the finger of shame squarely off the page. Light on hard information and weakened by straining for poetic effect, but nonetheless a briskly companionable account of days in the albatrosses' midst.

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents