Rating: 
Summary: a Love Story
Review: I am very moved by the love, the courage and the discipline of Alexandra Morton. She is a paragon of free spirits, living out the dream many of us only fantasize but dare not pursue--living on a boat to follow the whales on waves. Not only she portrays the fascinating orcas with delightful insights, she also writes about her later romance and boat-life with her documentary husband Robin and their baby on the boat. It's beautiful and loving account, which makes his later accident even more sorrowful and tragic, not just for her but for all of us and whales too. From this book you will be absorbed by the orcas' ways of communication and intelligence, as well as the life on the Vancouver waters and islands. After you read this book, you will look at those captured dolphines and whales and Seaworld or zoos very differently. Alexandra writes with clarity and love.
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Summary: The story of the orca, but also the story of the human.
Review: I recently finished "Listening to Whales", and am left wanting more. I'm tempted to reread the book less than a day after finishing it. I was spellbound. This book tells the stories of a woman who has spent her life as the boat-bound shadow of these amazing animals, and the accounts of their behaviors towards not only her, but towards each other and their environment, have truly proved to me that we are surely not the only intelligent life on this planet. In one case, Alexandra is studying a mating pair of orcas in a marine park in California. The female gives birth to the first of a number of calves that are fated to die. After the death of this first calf, the female sinks to the bottom of her tank, and for three days does not move except to breathe. She stays on the bottom of the tank and wails, while her mate circles above her, consistantly calling to her. After the thrid day, the female responds to her mate with the same call, and rises to the surface, swimming in total synchronity with him. That morning, the female accepts her first meal since her baby's death, and she never sinks to the bottom of the tank again. Death, mourning, and healing--in whales.
The book ultimately ends in tragedy as salmon farms arrive in the waters that Alexandra has been studying whales in. The farms take over the area, spreading rare and deadly illness to the wild Pacific salmon, the orca's main food source, and decimating their population. The farms are toxic waste factories, dumping as much sewage into the water on a daily basis as a one-million person city. The whales leave to safer regions--but how long will these regions last?
Amazingly touching and intelligently written, this book allows a glimpse into the personal lives of beings whose world is completely alien to us, but whose brain power may exceed our own. Don't miss this!
Rating:
Summary: delightful
Review: review from the Massachusetts Sierran
by Diana MuirThe haunting underwater song of whales has become such familiar music that it is easy to forget that a mere generation ago no human had ever heard the voice of the Leviathan, much less attempted to understand what they were saying. Alexandra Morton listens to whales. In their songs she hears not only the beauty and mystery of the deep, but keys to the complex lifeways of a species.
Listening to Whales is the coming of age story of a scientist. A surprising story because Morton's first adult steps were taken in a decidedly unscientific direction.
As a teenager, Alexandra Morton felt stifled by school, which is hardly unusual. Nor is it uncommon for a young girl to love animals. It is, however, very unusual for accomplished parents who have had a French governess supervise their daughter's childhood as a prelude to sending her to one of New England's finest prep schools, to permit her to drop out in eleventh grade, demanding only that she "do something with her life."
Freed from formal schooling, Morton became fascinated with a set of researchers attempting to learn how to speak with primates and marine mammals. She spent several years attempting to decipher the languages of dolphins and of killer whales living in captivity. But she only found her true calling when she followed the killer whales, orca, to their native waters.
For Morton, the road to Damascas ran through Queen Charlotte Sound. There, at age 22, she dipped her hydrophone into cold, Pacific waters and first heard the call of whales echoing wild and free. Hydrophones, invented by the British to track German U-boats, were applied to peaceful purposes after the war. In 1979 the underwater listening device began to make Alexandra Morton into a scientist.
Implausible as it seems a mere two decades later, no one in that year had a clear picture of what orca ate in the wild. No one knew where they spent the winter, where they calved, or how the groups they travel in were composed. And no one knew what information they were conveying with their haunting songs. Morton wanted to find out.
Living on remote islands off the coast of British Columbia, Morton married Robin Morton, a photographer who captured some of the first underwater footage of orca in the wild. Together they pursued the whales in a small boat, their infant son swathed in waterproof parkas and tucked into a covered hammock in the bow.
Imagine taking your baby out in a small, inflatable Zodiac to a place where you might look up as "a wall of white water erupted near the head of the bay. In the froth I glimpsed patches of black and white and tawny brown. A sea lion somersaulted through the air like a rag doll... Through the ear phones came the sound of orcas tearing the sea lions apart. The whales moved so fast, they shook the sea lions out of their skins... Recently a harbor seal had jumped into a Zodiac to escape (orca) off Victoria. I did not see how my boat would remain afloat if (an) 800-pound sea lion decided to come
aboard."
By the time she began to study orca in the wild, Morton had outgrown her early hope of learning to talk to the animals and become a scientist trying to understand what they are communicating to each other. The things that she and her fellow researchers learn as they follow the orca are remarkable. Three races of orca live off western North America. As separate as any human tribes, they are not known to interbreed and when they meet, the 'tribes' either studiously ignore one another or mount aggressive displays of territorial defense. No researcher has witnessed a 'war' of the sort that Jane Goodall saw chimpanzees engage in, but the work is ongoing. What is now well understood is that when orca vocalize the 'tribes' use very different sounds with very different patterns. Orca, that is, speak distinct languages that are mutually unintelligible and must be acquired in early childhood.
Moments of quiet triumph illuminate this absorbing tale. The exaltation of getting a piece of work done right. The eureka thrill of knowing that what one has just figured out is altogether new in the world. The day Morton's parents come to hear her read a paper at a scientific conference, and breath a sigh of relief. Their calculated gamble has paid off. The restless girl whom they allowed to follow her own path in life has launched a career that would make any parent proud. Diana Muir is the author of Bullough's Pond
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Summary: Listening to Alex
Review: This book is a fascinating biography of an individual, a wild area, and the whales(and other creatures). Having spent a fair bit of time in this stunning environment, I found Alex's words to be both respectful and plain in their advocacy for the pristine qualities of the orcas and the Broughton Archipelago. She's not a screaming "radical" but speaks all the more loudly as her actions are based on reason and science. The book is well written and full of the fascinating characters that have inhabited both Alex's life and her ocean.
Rating: 
Summary: Listening to Whales
Review: This book moves right along. You will get an easy education on killer whales. Very interesting. What a facinating life Alexandra has had-especially to anyone living in the city and doing the 9 to 5.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: This is a great book. Alexandra does a fantastic job of tying her life into the Orca's and educating us about their plight. I would recommend this book to anyone who was interested in learing more orcas, and to hear an interesting story along the way.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: This is a great book. Alexandra does a fantastic job of tying her life into the Orca's and educating us about their plight. I would recommend this book to anyone who was interested in learing more orcas, and to hear an interesting story along the way.
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Summary: Eyes of the Raincoast
Review: This is the autobiography (so far) of whale researcher Alexandra Morton who came to the remote Broughton Archipelago in 1984 to study orcas and was herself woven by nature into the warp and woof of that amazing place. While telling a fascinating story the book imparts a great deal of knowledge in so painless a manner that we hardly notice. We learn, for example, that there are three kinds of orcas: "residents," who eat mostly fish; "transients" who eat mostly seals and sea lions; and "offshores" who--nobody knows for sure--may well eat mostly sharks. Though whales, both captive and free, are the stars of this story, the real star is the Broughton itself with its myriad islands and channels, its sunny summer breezes and howling winter storms. With so few people living in the Broughton, the BC government pillages its islands with clearcuts, and both levels of government cooperate to pollute its waters with open netcage salmon farms. Courageous residents fight a running battle to protect the wild coast and wild fish they love from the blindness of bureaucrats and the greed of multinational corporations. This wonderful story, which is all true, will make you cry for the ocean, and at the same time renew your hope in the power of courageous people to change the world. If you have a kayak, go and paddle through the Broughton that Alexandra and her friends are fighting to save for us. You might even be able to help.
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Summary: WOW - The BEST Book I Have Ever Read
Review: This is THE best book I have ever read - including fiction and non-fiction. Not only do you get an inside look into the life of these wonderful mammals, you share in a life story that is in itself remarkable. Alexaner is a great writer, and page by page you are taken on a journey that you never want to end. For anyone who loves orcas, this is a must have. What a great story. Thank you SO MUCH Alexander for allowing us to share in your story - you are MY Jane Goodall.
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