9 best orca books for adults for 2019
Finding your suitable orca books for adults is not easy. You may need consider between hundred or thousand products from many store. In this article, we make a short list of the best orca books for adults including detail information and customer reviews. Let’s find out which is your favorite one.
Best orca books for adults
1. Orca: How We Came to Know and Love the Ocean's Greatest Predator
Description
Since the release of the documentary Blackfish in 2013, millions around the world have focused on the plight of the orca, the most profitable and controversial display animal in history. Yet, until now, no historical account has explained how we came to care about killer whales in the first place.Drawing on interviews, official records, private archives, and his own family history, Jason M. Colby tells the exhilarating and often heartbreaking story of how people came to love the ocean's greatest predator. Historically reviled as dangerous pests, killer whales were dying by the hundreds, even thousands, by the 1950s--the victims of whalers, fishermen, and even the US military. In the Pacific Northwest, fishermen shot them, scientists harpooned them, and the Canadian government mounted a machine gun to eliminate them. But that all changed in 1965, when Seattle entrepreneur Ted Griffin became the first person to swim and perform with a captive killer whale. The show proved wildly popular, and he began capturing and selling others, including Sea World's first Shamu.
Over the following decade, live display transformed views of Orcinus orca. The public embraced killer whales as charismatic and friendly, while scientists enjoyed their first access to live orcas. In the Pacific Northwest, these captive encounters reshaped regional values and helped drive environmental activism, including Greenpeace's anti-whaling campaigns. Yet even as Northwesterners taught the world to love whales, they came to oppose their captivity and to fight for the freedom of a marine predator that had become a regional icon.
This is the definitive history of how the feared and despised "killer" became the beloved "orca"--and what that has meant for our relationship with the ocean and its creatures.
2. Listening to Whales: What the Orcas Have Taught Us
Description
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.
3. Of Orcas and Men: What Killer Whales Can Teach Us
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Overlook PrDescription
A celebrated journalists eye-opening history of orcas, and an exploration of their relationship with human beings--a must-read for anyone who's ever been moved by these remarkable creatures
Orcas are one of earths most intelligent animals. Benign and gentle, with their own languages and cultures, orcas amazing capacity for long-term memory and, arguably, compassion, makes the ugly story of the captive-orca industry especially damning.
In Of Orcas and Men, a marvelously compelling mix of cultural history, environmental reporting, and scientific research, David Neiwert explores how this extraordinary species has come to capture our imaginationsand the catastrophic environmental consequences of that appeal.
In the tradition of Barry Lopezs classic Of Wolves and Men, David Neiwerts book is a powerful tribute to one of the animal kingdoms most remarkable members.
30 b&w illustrations throughout4. Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas
Description
Science entwines with matters of the human heart as a whale researcher chronicles the lives of an endangered family of orcasEver since Eva Saulitis began her whale research in Alaska in the 1980s, she has been drawn deeply into the lives of a single extended family of endangered orcas struggling to survive in Prince William Sound.Over the course ofa decades-long career spent observing and studying these whales, and eventually coming to know them as individuals, she has, sadly, witnessed the devastation wrought by the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989after which not a single calf has been born to the group. With the intellectual rigor of a scientist and the heart of a poet, Saulitis gives voice to these vital yet vanishing survivors and the place they are so loyal to. Both an elegy for one orca family and a celebration of the entire species, Into Great Silence is a moving portrait of the interconnectedness of humans with animals and placeand of the responsibility we have to protect them.
5. Orca: The Whale Called Killer
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Used Book in Good ConditionDescription
"Hoyt's passionate sense of kinship with orca makes his account effective as both a science and literature. He has chronicled his adventures and discoveries ...with grace, insight, wit--and a comprehensiveness that might satisfy even Herman Melville."
(Discover Magazine)
Star performers in aquariums and marine parks, killer whales were once considered to be too dangerous to approach in the wild. Erich Hoyt and his colleagues spent seven summers following these intelligent and playful creatures in the waters off northern Vancouver Island, intent on dispelling the killer myth. Orca: The Whale Called Killer is Hoyt's exciting account of those summers of adventure and discovery, and the definitive, classic work on the orca or killer whale.
The Free Willy films, inspired in part by Hoyt's pioneering writing about orcas, tell the story of a captive orca being returned to the wild. (Hoyt, in fact, recommended Keiko, the orca who became the star of Free Willy, to Warner Bros.) But Orca: The Whale Called Killer tells the true story of wild orcas befriending humans.
6. A Pod of Killer Whales: The Mysterious Life of the Intelligent Orca (Jean-Michel Cousteau Presents)
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7. The Lost Whale: The True Story of an Orca Named Luna
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Used Book in Good ConditionDescription
The heartbreaking and true story of a lonely orca named Luna who befriended humans in Nootka Sound, off the coast of Vancouver Island by Michael Parfit and Suzanne Chisholm.
One summer in Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, a young killer whale called Luna got separated from his pod. Like humans, orcas are highly social and depend on their families, but Luna found himself desperately alone. So he tried to make contact with people. He begged for attention at boats and docks. He looked soulfully into people's eyes. He wanted to have his tongue rubbed. When someone whistled at him, he squeaked and whistled back. People fell in love with him, but the government decided that being friendly with Luna was bad for him, and tried to keep him away from humans. Policemen arrested people for rubbing Luna's nose. Fines were levied. Undaunted, Luna refused to give up his search for connection and people went out to meet him, like smugglers carrying friendship through the dark. But does friendship work between species? People who loved Luna couldn't agree on how to help him. Conflict came to Nootka Sound. The government built a huge net. The First Nations' members brought out their canoes. Nothing went as planned, and the ensuing events caught everyone by surprise and challenged the very nature of that special and mysterious bond we humans call friendship. The Lost Whale celebrates the life of a smart, friendly, determined, transcendent being from the sea who appeared among us like a promise out of the blue: that the greatest secrets in life are still to be discovered.
8. If I Were a Whale
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Little BigfootDescription
From best-selling childrens author Shelley Gill comes this colorful, rhyming board book playfully featuring whales found in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic Oceans. Toddlers will love to learn about whales swimming in the deep blue sea in this beautifully illustrated board book that shares simple whale facts in an imaginative way.If I could be anything, do you know what Id be? Id be a whale in the deep blue sea.
Scooping up fishes and flipping my tail, Id be a minke or beluga whale.
9. Who Would Win? Killer Whale vs. Great White Shark
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