Meeting the Whales: The Equinox Guide to Giants of the Deep

Jean-Franзois Robitaille is an assistant professor of Zoology at
Laurentian University.

Meeting the Whales, with its 78 color photographs, line drawings and
color diagrams, and its wonderfully synthesized 72-page text, will
transform the reader into a potential whale-watcher and -lover. It does
so by presenting in a fashionable way a cross-section of the knowledge
that scientists (with the help of the general public) have gathered
during the recent decades. The structure of the book is appealing. It
starts off by delivering in a sharp and concise way the most basic and
perhaps fascinating comparative technical data on the whale: size,
diversity, origin, swimming performance, sensory adaptations, commensal
animals, and annual migrations. The next chapters are a mixture of
field-guide information and accounts of scientific research that reveal
up-to-date information on whale species’ life history as well as
descriptions of scientists’ efforts and successes in gathering that
information.

As we approach the end of the book, two chapters (“Whale Behaviour”
and “Whales and Humans”) bring the reader even closer to the
animals. These pages focus on the ever-popular and pleasurable activity
of whale-watching, collecting data while whale-watching, and
contributing financially to the ecological and behavioural studies of
these still little-known and often endangered animals. Hoyt has again,
as in Seasons of the Whales, succeeded in bringing together the
technical as well as esthetic qualities that the public is now looking
for in bookstores.