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| The Fragile Edge: Diving and Other Adventures in the South Pacific | 
| Author: Julia Whitty
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy Used: $0.88
You Save: $24.12 (96%)
New (10) from $3.98
Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 434001
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.8 x 1
ISBN: 0618197168
Dewey Decimal Number: 578.7789099622
EAN: 9780618197163
ASIN: 0618197168
Publication Date: May 7, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 6-8 of 8 | | « PREV | | |
Excellent May 22, 2007
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Most people think of coral reefs as part of the tropical paradise they seek when they jet off to "the islands" to get away from the cold of winter. Reefs are associated with palm trees and blue water and sun tans and romance. Biologists and oceanographers know that reefs are the most diverse communities on the planet, built into enormous structures by some of the smallest and most interesting animals on the planet. In many ways, coral reefs are the basis of life in the ocean.
But in the South Pacific, reefs and the islands they surround and support are in deep trouble (no pun intended). Julia Whitty has been filming reefs for 15 years, so she knows them well, and she has seen their deterioration first hand. Now she has turned her considerable talents to writing a book, and if there's any justice, this book will do for coral what Rachel Carson's books did for the oceans and shores nearly half a century ago.
"The Fragile Edge: Diving and Other Adventures in the South Pacific" is a three-part work that unflinchingly examines the world of coral reefs from three perspectives, each set on a different island in French Polynesia. In part one, she describes the atoll of Rangiroa from the perspective of a diver. Writing about the underwater world is no easy task.
Photographers and film-makers have always done a better job of describing the life aquatic. Perhaps that is because it is such a visual experience that most divers perceive it only from the right side of the brain, so it's easier to capture and present great images in lieu of thousands of words. Whitty has managed to capture the experience with words as powerful and colorful and well-composed as any photo or video clip she has ever made.
But her descriptions are not just artful. They are well grounded in science. She knows the biology of the reef and the intricate web of relationships in the coral ecosystem. The reader can learn with a sense of awe.
Part 2, Whitty moves to the dying atoll of Funafuti. This is no paradise. She takes a room in a guesthouse owned by a terminally alcoholic German expat and his wife Emily, a nurse who works for the atoll's local government. Funafuti is devoid of tourists and is rapidly losing its only source of economic support -- the reef around it -- to overfishing and pollution. Western influence has turned the formerly self-sufficient island into a throwaway society that is in deep denial about the threats surrounding it from all sides, especially the rising of the sea as far away glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland turn liquid. Even in that, Funafuti is a victim of Western influence as the locals choose to believe Australian denials that the sea level is rising, in spite of the evidence in front of them.
In the final part, Whitty visits Mo'orea, where she introduces the reader to the inhabitants of the island's lagoon and reef in lyrical but unsentimental prose. From her encounter with a pelagic octopus to the tense, inevitable demise of a pod of spinner dolphins when inconvenient winds trap them inside the reef, where they normally rest, but have no food, Whitty shares her sharp observations and insights, flavored with references to Hindu mythology (she hints at having a South Asian heritage) to try to explain states of mind that humans and some animals might actually have in common.
Whitty concludes this astonishing work with an epilogue set on Marlon Brando's private atoll Teti'aroa, where she contemplates the evidence of the planet's demise and consoles herself with the lesson from geology that reefs have come and gone throughout the history of the Earth.
"Whatever role we might play in the next great extinction will surely have less effect on the tenacious reemergence of reef-builders than it will on us. Reefs, we know, can survive without us. The opposite may not be true."
Julia Whitty has a lovely voice, but it's a voice bringing dire warnings that we had better heed soon.
magical May 22, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Wow, i have never been to the south seas and I am not even a diver, but this book absolutely transported me through the waves to the world below the surface. The authors descriptions were so vivid and the facts so compelling. I loved learning about the coral reefs, fish, the south pacific and its people in such an enteraining way. I did not want this book to end, it's just so good, like a great mystery. My book club has decided to add it to our summer list.
Karen Jones
Unique Insight May 17, 2007
The extraordinary thing about Julia Whitty's book is that it allows the reader a unique view into the underwater world of the coral reef. It somehow gives us new eyes and senses to perceive this miraculous world. The world of the coral reef is not an abstraction but rather a universe of myriad living creatures. Fragile Edge gives me a sense of this world I've never had before so that when I enter it the experience is more deeply meaningful.
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Wildlife, nature and the Environment
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