Diving Companions

Diving Companions: Sea Lion - Elephant Seal - Walrus
©  1974 Jacques-Yves Cousteau
304 pages

Before David Attenborough, there was Jacques-Yves Cousteau, who helped invent SCUBA gear and used it in expeditions across the globe to explore the unknown right here on Earth: the life of the oceans. The journeys of the Calypso and her exploring minisubmarine resulted in a series of books about whales, dolphins, and the like, but Diving Companion collects Cousteau's adventures with more far-flung creatures: sea lions, elephant seals, and walruses. The book combines a  travel diary and nature commentary, throwing in a little Eskimo anthropology as a bonus. Unusually for the series, there''s also a chapter on the coastlines and islands of Alaska, which were studied enroute to the Artic. There, sea otters receive some lingering and affectionate attention.

 The stars themselves are a related family, cow-like creatures which at some point took to the sea again. Most of them make their habitat in cold zones, protecting themselves with large sheaths of fat. Their diets vary from species to species; sea lions are quick enough to go for fish, while elephant seals are relegated to less-fleet-footed starfish.   Although they are all wary of human contact, being hunted species, the crew of the Calypso found them approachable from a crawl. (The humans literally crawled on the beach and became one with the herd.)  In an effort to see how they might adjust to living and working in humans, Cousteau's men attempted to capture test subjects and keep them on the boat, both in a cage and in a large pool. The elephant seals, the grumpiest and most intimidating of the three, thwarted every attempt at capture.  Two sea lions were brought on board the Calypso and seemed to adjust to captivity, even keeping near the boat when unleashed, but they exhibited a marked sadness and were eventually freed.  An orphaned walrus pup was also adopted, and because of its young age grew very much attached to the humans.    Although much of the book is certainly dated now, like the balance established between the Eskimos and the walrus population which nourished them, as well as the increasingly-dangerous state of elephant sea concentration onto one island,   these are creatures worth reading about -- especially the beautiful sea lions.

Dolphins

Dolphins

© 1975 Jacques-Yves Cousteau

304 pages

In every color, there is the light. In every stone sleeps a crystal. Remember the shaman, when he used to say -- "Man is the dream of the dolphin." - "The Dream of the Dolphin", Enigma

"It is obvious that dolphins are often motivated by curiosity, and especially by curiosity about man. One can literally see it in their eyes. This is a fact that can be doubted only by someone who has never really looked a dolphin in the eye. The brilliance of that organ, the spark that is so evidence there, seems to come from another world. The look which the dolphin gives -- a keen look, slightly melancholy and mischievous, but less insolent and cynical than that of monkeys -- seems full of indulgence for the uncertainties of the human condition. Among primates, one sometimes detects what appears to be sadness at not being human. This sentiment is alien to the dolphin." - pg. 27-28

Back in 2007 I read Cousteau's Whales, consisting of recollections of his years spent on the open seas tracking whales (organized topically) replete with plenty of pictures. Dolphins is very much the same: like Whales, it's a translation from the original French and consists of informational recollections about dolphins. There isn't an obvious organization behind the way chapters are arranged: a chapter on dolphin biology may be followed immediately by a chapter recounting human-dolphin interactions throughout history. Nothing other than the subject (and the binding) holds the book together, but given how interesting the subject is to most people, I doubt that it is very much hurt by this.

Despite how familiar dolphins seem, Cousteau writes, we know very little about them. What little information we posses has been collected by observing dolphins in captivity, where their behavior has been "deformed", to use the word his translator likes to use so often. There's a lot of information in here, especially in the chapter focusing on historical interactions between humanity and dolphins. A story from Pliny detailing how fishermen used to fish with dolphins, allowing the dolphins to drive fish toward the shore is followed by Cousteau's account of visiting a tribe in Mauritania that has subsisted on fish caught with the aid of dolphins for untold generations. This section has some of the more interesting pictures, in my view: historical depictions of dolphins. Apparently Jesus has been presented as a dolphin before.

Although the book's subject is interesting, some of the information contained therein might be dated: this was written in 1975, when technological limitations made it impossible to gather detailed information on dolphins in the wild. Today, palm-sized cameras and equipment like this probably make marine biologists' jobs a lot easier.

This Week at the Library (3/7)

I've had a lot of good reading the last few weeks, which is not suprising given how heavily steeped my library selections were in science. I began with Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade. The cover of the book is of a mature acacia tree, silhouetted by a beautiful African sunset. Before the Dawn is a work of anthropology, and it focuses on humanity as we became human and began to populate the globe. All aspects of human society at that time are brought into focus -- race, religion, and so forth. It reminded me a bit of Guns, Germs, and Steel. If you're interested in anthropology, I think this book is worth checking into. While reading it, I couldn't get a certain Johnny Clegg tune out of my head.

We are scatterlings of Africa, both you and I...
We're on the road to Phelamanga, beneath a coppy sky
And we are scatterlings of Africa, on a journey to the stars..
Far below we leave forever dreams of what we were....

I then read two related books about neurology. The first was Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, which dealt with the biological origins of belief. I found it interesting, but I enjoyed Phantoms in the Brain far more. It was a genuine pageturner. I enjoyed every moment I spent reading it. Phantoms deals with mysteries of the human mind -- phantom limbs, stroke oddities, delusions, hallucinations, and so on. Technical knowledge about the field may help in better understanding some of the biology mentioned, but you need nothing to appreciate the weirdness that the brain is capable of generating.

The next book I read was Jacques-Yves Cousteau's The Whale, and it was interesting enough. It isn't exactly an informative book about whales; it chronicles some of Cousteau's trips and a lot of the material is his logs. There are many pictures, but I was looking more for information. I changed genres for my next book when I read The Prophet by Khalil Gibran. It is a work of poetry, and rather than read it straight through like a novel, I read the chapters one at a time and savored them. I've posted some of my favorite quotations here.

After this, I read Isaac Asimov's Extraterrestial Civilizations, whereupon Mr. Asmiov explains the requirements for life to arise in the universe, and speculates on what kind of organisms might form in varying atmospheres. He also writes about human colonization efforts. I read this mainly because of the author. On a similar note, I read Space Station: Base Camps to the Stars, which was a history of human efforts to establish a space station in orbit. I found it to be highly interesting.

My next book was a history book titled Hitler's Shadow War, and it put forth the idea that the second world war was really just a farce -- something Hitler did to draw attention away from his genocidal policies. While it failed to prove this to me, it did offer a lot of information on the Holocaust. The last book I read was a work of fiction by Jean M. Auel, called The Clan of the Cave Bear. I ran across this while reading about Neanderthals. The book is about a young Cro-Magnon girl who is adopted by a tribe of Neanderthals. The "Clan", as they call themselves, are very different humans than we are, and the girl -- Ayla -- must struggle to fit in. As she does, we learn about how these humans might have lived. I loved this book and decided to read more of the series.

So that concludes my last two weeks of reading. As I said, highly enjoyable. Next week:

1. The Valley of Horses, the sequel to The Clan of the Cave Bear.
2. Nightfall and Other Stories by Isaac Asimov.
3. Dolphin Days by Kenneth S. Norris.
4. The Tribe of Tiger by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
5. Jewish Wisdom by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin.

That should make for a lovely week of reading.