Eye of the Whale: Epic Passage From Baja To Siberia

"Once in a while, a book comes along that redefines its subject to the extent that most previous works immediately become obsolete. Eye of the Whale is such a book...it will change the way you think about the natural world." -RICHARD ELLIS, LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW

Named a Best Book of the Year by three major newspapers upon its initial publication, and now available for the first time in paperback, Eye of the Whale offers an exhilarating blend of adventure and natural history as Dick Russell follows the migration of the gray whale from Mexico's Baja peninsula to the Arctic's Bering Strait.

Originally named "Devil-fish' by nineteenth-century whalers, the gray whale's friendly overtures toward humans over the past generation helped to spark the growth of today's whale-watching industry. This majestic marine mammal has also become a focus of controversy, as environmentalists fought to protect its breeding area from industrial development, some protested renewed hunting by a Native American tribe, and, more recently, scientific studies have noted a new decline in the whale's population.

Russell's narrative interweaves the remarkable story of Charles Melville Scammon, a nineteenth-century whaling captain responsible for bringing gray whales to the brink of extinction, whose change of heart led to his becoming a renowned naturalist. Retracing Scammon's path, the author encounters contemporary marine biologists who have devoted their lives to studying the gray whale, and native peoples for whom subsistence whale hunting means survival in the most remote regions of the North Pacific.

Called "an extraordinary book" by The Washington Post, Eye of the Whale is a stirring account of a creature that is changing our consciousness about the relationship between human beings and the animal kingdom.

More than a century ago, the whaler Charles Melville Scammon chased pods of gray whales across the Pacific, slaughtering them by the hundreds and driving them nearly to the point of extinction. Dick Russell, a noted conservationist and journalist, follows Scammon's wake, bringing news both good and bad about the condition of the gray whale today.

Chronicling a journey along Pacific gray whale routes from Sakhalin Island to the southern tip of Baja California, Russell braces his narrative with the long, politically charged tale of a Japanese corporation's efforts to build a salt-extraction plant on a Mexican lagoon that has served for ages as an important gray whale breeding ground. Writing knowingly of gray whale natural history, and of the effects such an alteration of the environment would have on the species, Russell then turns to other controversial threats to the gray, such as the Washington Makah tribe's decision in the late 1990s to revive a lost tradition of whale-hunting, and the Japanese government's refusal to honor international treaties protecting the gray and other whale species from widespread depredation.

The good news, as Russell writes, is that the Mexican salt plant was eventually stopped. The bad news is that the gray whale is still everywhere under siege. Though it does not displace recent books such as Serge Dedina's Saving the Gray Whale and Robert Sullivan's A Whale Hunt, Russell's is by far the most complete popular account of the gray whale across its wide range, and it makes useful reading for anyone seeking to learn more about this key marine species. --Gregory McNamee