Reviews for New England Whale Watch

The average rating for New England Whale Watch based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-04-04 00:00:00 Malik Lane "I picked away the layers of slime to reveal the most beautiful fish I had ever seen," she recounts. "It was five feet long, a pale, mauvy blue with faint flecks of whitish spots; it had an iridescent silver-blue-green sheen all over. It was covered in hard scales, and it had four limb-like fins and a strange little puppy dog tail. It was such a beautiful fish-more like a big china ornament-but I didn't know what it was." ~ Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer I really enjoyed this fascinating tale of the discovery in South Africa in 1938 of a live coelacanth (see-lo-canth), an ancient fish known from fossils but presumed until then to have died out 70 million years ago, and of the ongoing research into its morphology, natural history and place in the evolutionary tree relative to humans. Weinberg skillfully weaves an easy introduction to the science into a compelling narrative of a cast of eccentric naturalists, mercenaries, undersea explorers, and government officials cooperating and competing to catch dead and live specimens, against the backdrop of colonialism, World War II, and civil war in South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, the Comoros Islands, and Indonesia. She touches on obsession, ambition, greed, and national pride as drivers of the quest that could have resulted in a tragic and ironic modern extinction for this amazing survivor, but also describes apparently effective efforts at conserving the species, which remains little understood. I highly recommend.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-09-25 00:00:00 Joe Ackerman This fascinating history of the Coelacanth is beautifully written, lighthearted and fascinating. A brilliant yarn in every sense of the word, it tells the story of how the Coelacanth went from being a fossil considered to be extinct for 50-70 million years to being one of the few distinguished 'living fossils' of our time. The story takes us back to East London, South Africa 1938 when a young museum curator, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer went down to examine a trawler catch and found a fish that was so beautiful that the image stayed with her for the rest of her life, but also it was a fish mysteriously unidentifiable and taxonomically strange. Throughout the book the people who see the Coelocanth, especially unexpectedly, all seem to have a moment when they realise they are seeing something unique, perhaps because it is so unlike modern fish. I learnt about the Coelocanth of course, I am sure that anyone who studied Zoology or Marine Biology did. Even for me the very small segment of course spent on it stirred the imagination and so this book about how it was discovered, exposed to modern science and slowly revealed and the layers of of mystery were slowly peeled back was just amazing. Loved this book.