Voices in the Ocean: A Journey into the Wild and Haunting World of Dolphins

by Susan Casey Narrated by Cassandra Campbell

Overview

From Susan Casey, the New York Times bestselling author of The Wave and The Devil's Teeth, a breathtaking journey through the extraordinary world of dolphins

Since the dawn of recorded history, humans have felt a kinship with the sleek and beautiful dolphin, an animal whose playfulness, sociability, and intelligence seem like an aquatic mirror of mankind. In recent decades, we have learned that dolphins recognize themselves in reflections, count, grieve, adorn themselves, feel despondent, rescue one another (and humans), deduce, infer, seduce, form cliques, throw tantrums, and call themselves by name. Scientists still don't completely understand their incredibly sophisticated navigation and communication abilities, or their immensely complicated brains.

While swimming off the coast of Maui, Susan Casey was surrounded by a pod of spinner dolphins. It was a profoundly transporting experience, and it inspired her to embark on a two-year global adventure to explore the nature of these remarkable beings and their complex relationship to humanity. Casey examines the career of the controversial John Lilly, the pioneer of modern dolphin studies whose work eventually led him down some very strange paths. She visits a community in Hawaii whose adherents believe dolphins are the key to spiritual enlightenment, travels to Ireland, where a dolphin named as "the world's most loyal animal" has delighted tourists and locals for decades with his friendly antics, and consults with the world's leading marine researchers, whose sense of wonder inspired by the dolphins they study increases the more they discover.

Yet there is a dark side to our relationship with dolphins. They are the stars of a global multibillion-dollar captivity industry, whose money has fueled a sinister and lucrative trade in which dolphins are captured violently, then shipped and kept in brutal conditions. Casey's investigation into this cruel underground takes her to the harrowing epicenter of the trade in the Solomon Islands, and to the Japanese town of Taiji, made famous by the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove, where she chronicles the annual slaughter and sale of dolphins in its narrow bay.

Casey ends her narrative on the island of Crete, where millennia-old frescoes and artwork document the great Minoan civilization, a culture which lived in harmony with dolphins, and whose example shows the way to a more enlightened coexistence with the natural world.

No writer is better positioned to portray these magical creatures than Susan Casey, whose combination of personal reporting, intense scientific research, and evocative prose made The Wave and The Devil's Teeth contemporary classics of writing about the sea. In Voices in the Ocean, she has written a thrilling book about the other intelligent life on the planet.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Audio

09/28/2015
Voice-over actress Campbell delivers a powerful performance of journalist Casey’s moving (and often heart-wrenching) title exploring one of our planet’s most complex and mysterious species. Campbell possesses a gift for channeling the personalities of the people who Casey encounters during her travels; this talent makes for a gripping listening experience. For example, Campbell perfectly captures the ethereal charm of a New Age marine guru named Joan Ocean. She also scores in her colorful rendering of Lawrence Makili, a native of the Solomon Islands who has channeled his considerable grit and savvy into activism on behalf of the beleaguered dolphins in the waters of his nation. In the section of the narrative devoted to Taiji, Japan’s notorious annual dolphin hunt, Campbell’s ability to project the tones of bitter confrontation without descending into simplistic caricature is a notable accomplishment. Listeners will be utterly enthralled. A Doubleday hardcover. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

07/13/2015
After a chance encounter with a pod of wild spinner dolphins while swimming in Honolua Bay, Casey (The Wave) finds herself unable to shake dolphins from her mind. She embarks an investigation into the world of dolphins, impressing the reader with her curiosity and thrilling sense of discovery as she travels the world to learn about these unique creatures. She describes early research into the brain science of dolphins, a highly intelligent species, beginning with Dr. John Lilly in the early 1950s, and traces the origins of dolphin captivity and showcasing, which date back to the circus showman P.T. Barnum in 1861. She also explores the cultural significance of dolphins in different cultures, such as the members of the Chumash nation, California’s earliest inhabitants, who considered dolphins to be their direct relatives. But the most compelling aspect of the book is Casey’s investigation of the current plight of dolphins—faced with captivity; the now infamous dolphin hunt in Taiji, Japan; and the seriously ruined state of the world’s oceans, for example—and the people working to effect change to protect and save them. Casey’s book comes as a welcome addition on a topic also explored in the recent documentaries The Cove and Blackfish. (Aug.)

From the Publisher

Part science, part memoir, part impassioned plea for change, [Voices in the Ocean] fascinates.” ―People

“Painstakingly researched and gorgeously written.... Casey transports us through the many truths and myths about dolphins.” —USA Today

“Casey skillfully weaves global adventure travelogues, first-person reportage and deep archival research. She exhibits a flair for peppering her tales with complex scientific concepts but keeps them accessible for consumption by a broader audience without losing the narrative arc or momentum.” —The Miami Herald

“A meticulously reported global odyssey.... [Casey] has an inexhaustible curiosity and a knack for fully embracing her subject.” —Outside Magazine

“A reminder of the unique and complicated bond humans feel with these animals.... Casey's moving writing left me with some hope for a better future for dolphins and humans.”
     —Mary Bates, Slate

“What starts out as a feel-good, new-agey account darkens like the sunlight diminishing in the deep, subtly turning into a devastating chronicle of one of the most egregious mismatches in natural-human history. The result is a brilliantly written and passionate book.... timely and urgent.”
     —The Guardian (London)

“A passionate and richly readable account of dolphins—their world, their behaviors, and the humans whose lives revolve around studying them.... Fascinating and cautiously joyous . . . a book any lover of nature should read.”
     —Open Letters Monthly

“[A] blend of mystic wonder with scientific awe and downright dangerous environmental confrontations.”
     —InStyle

“[Casey] embarks an investigation into the world of dolphins, impressing the reader with her curiosity and thrilling sense of discovery as she travels the world to learn about these unique creatures.”
     —Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

08/01/2015
Journalist and author Casey, who has written previous books on marine topics (Devil's Teeth), explores evidence of a unique bond between humans and dolphins throughout history. The art and legends of ancient civilizations, such as the Minoans and Greeks as well as native American peoples, depict dolphins helping humans. Prior to the 2004 Indonesian tsunami a pod of dolphins prevented a group of sightseeing boats from heading to shore and ushered them back to safety. Swimmers and surfers in Hawaii and California have reported that dolphins saved them from shark attacks. Casey admires the animals' x-ray vision, echolocation skills, high-frequency communication, sociability, and swimming speed and laments that they have been harmed by marine pollution and overfishing, which reduces their food supply. The author made contact with marine mammal conservation groups and traveled to parks in Hawaii, the Dominican Republic, Japan, and Canada in which dolphins are kept in captivity under harmful conditions. A list of scientific and environmental groups and their websites are included. Photos not seen. VERDICT This book does not provide scientific background as does Justin Gregg's Are Dolphins Really that Smart? but will interest general and YA readers, as well as nature lovers, who will lose their eagerness to visit dolphin shows and may be motivated toward further reading on the subject.—Judith B. Barnett, Univ. of Rhode Island Lib., Kingston

OCTOBER 2015 - AudioFile

Casey’s very personal, sometimes heartbreaking audiobook about the plight of dolphins and our deep connection with them takes her from Hawaii to the Caribbean, Japan, the Solomon Islands, and the Aegean. More than dolphins, she also focuses on interesting people, heroes, villains, and New Age sages. Narrator Cassandra Campbell’s alto voice is soft, sometimes tentative, but well paced and easy to follow. She sounds as if she’s engaged in a confidential conversation. Campbell has done her homework on the pronunciation of species names and far-flung places. Casey makes her point that our callous disregard for the welfare of earth’s creatures most like us in intelligence offers a dire warning about the destructive nature of the human species. F.C. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2015-07-08
Former O, the Oprah Magazine editor-in-chief Casey (The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean, 2010, etc.) takes the measure of the human-dolphin dance. For hundreds of years, dolphins have been bestowed mythological and cultural significance, been the object of both good and bad scientific study, and been written about countless times. Why? The author gives the reason up front: they are playful, social, and intelligent. They are like us—some of us, anyway, and as Casey learns, only some dolphins as well. The author spins her wheels trying to drive home that unique interface, and some readers may roll their eyes when she waxes poetic on the animal's profundity or how "they enfolded me into their gathering." She nails it, however, when she discusses the shattering loss of her father, the subsequent depression, and the liberating exultation in "how ridiculously fun it was to just cruise along with them." From there, the author runs through her experiences on her dolphin quest, from the classic scientific studies of Roger Payne to their totemic importance to the Pacific Northwest to their wild ride on TV: "After the Flipper movie grossed $8 million in 1963, the dolphin, a kind of aquatic house pet on steroids, was given his own TV show….The show's plots were cartoonish and fantastical but they struck a booming chord." Casey also delves into the miseries of dolphin factory farming and how other scientists have come close to realizing John Lilly's conviction "that the dolphin in the tank is not a what but a who." The most moving section of the book follows the author's visit to Crete, where she viewed the ancient frescoes and mosaics (some underwater) of dolphins, demonstrating their significance across ages. "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine," said astrophysicist Arthur Eddington. "It is stranger than we can imagine." That sublime wildness is exactly what Casey, ever the adventurer, reveals in this flawed but still entertaining book.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169326079
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	08/04/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged

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Prologue
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Voices in the Ocean"
by .
Copyright © 2016 Susan Casey.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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