Voices in the Ocean

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2015 GOODREADS CHOICE AWARDS 'BEST SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY BOOK'

Since the dawn of history, humans have felt a kinship with dolphins. But these playful aquatic creatures are also mysterious: scientists still don't fully understand their sophisticated navigation and communication abilities, or their complicated brains.

In 2010, following her father's death, Susan Casey had a remarkable encounter with a pod of spinner dolphins off the coast of Maui. It inspired her on a two-year global adventure to learn about these beautiful animals. Casey visits a Hawaiian community that believes dolphins are the key to enlightenment; travels to Ireland to meet 'the world's most loyal dolphin', and visits Crete to explore the ancient Minoans' interdependence on the animals.

Yet dolphins are also the subjects of a sinister lucrative global trade. Casey's reportage takes her to the harrowing epicentre in the Solomon Islands, and to the Japanese town of Taiji, made infamous by the Oscar–winning documentary The Cove, where she chronicles protests against the annual slaughter of dolphins.

In the tradition of Susan Orlean and Donovan Hohn, Voices in the Ocean is a thrilling, compassionate, imperative account of the other intelligent life on the planet.

PRAISE FOR SUSAN CASEY

'[W]hat starts out as a feelgood, 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

'Part science, part memoir, part impassioned plea for change, Casey's look at the world of dolphins – and our mistreatment of – fascinates.' People