Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997)

An older book about whales. By the famous French explorer who invented the Aqualung and made early documentaries of sea life. He invented the aqualung. This book describes a number of ocean expeditions the author made with his team, in pursuit of whales. His attempts to film whales swimming free in the oceans were among the first ever done- they had to find the whales, get close enough and then stay in range... They had some incredible encounters and learned some things about whales that nobody knew before (although the book feels seriously outdated to this reader). In different parts of the book they find and follow around humpbacks, grey whales, right whales, sperm whales, orcas, dolphins, finback whales and others. They found a way into some secluded lagoons in Baja California where grey whales give birth and raise their young. Made an attempt to save an injured grey whale calf that had beached, the mother nowhere in sight- but it only lived a few days. There’s descriptions of the gear they used, the differences between the whales, what was known about whale physiology and social behavior (not much on this last point, and some of the information given is just wrong).There’s lots about the sounds whales make, especially the humpback songs, and how whales reacted to recordings played back to them. The author surmises that soon mankind will decipher the language of whales- well here we are fifty years later, not yet! The author writes a lot in this book about how profoundly emotional he and the team members felt in the presence of the whales, that they often were observed and scrutinized, and in awe of the animals’ great size and apparent gentleness. Just by the way whales would look closely at them, they felt indicated a high intelligence. And they often related maneuvers the whales made as a group to shake off the trailing boats, which pointed at an obvious plan and collaboration among the pod or school. It’s kind of dismaying that with all the respect and admiration they claimed to feel towards the whales, they would still find it okay to lasso a calf, or try and stand on a wild whale's back. I guess they thought it wouldn’t hurt and took pride in the daring of these antics, and I’m sad that this is what stood out to me upon closing the book, when really there are many interesting passages and firsthand observations that were at the time, stunning revelations about whales. The pictures are somewhat blurred and grainy, but some are quite compelling in spite of that.… (mer)