Jason M. Colby
Autor de Orca: How We Came to Know and Love the Ocean's Greatest Predator
Sobre El Autor
Jason M. Colby is a professor of environmental and international history at the University of Victoria. Born in Victoria, British Columbia, and raised in the Seattle area, he worked as a commercial fisherman in Alaska and Washington State. He is the author of The Business of Empire: United Fruit, mostrar más Race, and US Expansion in Central America. mostrar menos
Obras de Jason M. Colby
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
Miembros
Reseñas
Listas
Estadísticas
- Obras
- 2
- Miembros
- 67
- Popularidad
- #256,179
- Valoración
- 3.8
- Reseñas
- 3
- ISBNs
- 9
But why do we love orcas? Why do we care so much? Until the 1960s, orcas, far from beloved, were regarded as vicious animals, and as pests that ate the salmon, other fish species, and seals, that fishermen and other commercial industries depended on. Whaling was also still a large and uncontroversial industry, and if orcas weren't a major target species, they were considered a perfectly acceptable catch for some purposes. They were actively killed by fishermen, scientists, and the government.
Scientists studied orcas, but they only studied dead orcas. Everything they knew came from disecting orcas, and a major interest was what they ate, because that mattered to the fishing industry.
What changed?
In 1965, Seattle entrepreneur Ted Griffin became the first person to swim and perform with a captive orca. The show was wildly popular, and he began capturing and selling more orcas, including Sea World's first Shamu. Orcas performing with humans where the general public could see them. Orcas in captivity also allowed scientists to study live orcas, and increased interest in orcas in the wild, in their natural habitat and social groups.
Jason Colby gives us a loving, detailed, revelatory history of how captive orcas changed both popular and scientific understanding of orcas, their true natures, and their role in the environment. He draws this information from official records, private archives, interviews, and his own family history, and the result is informative and compelling.
Recommended.
I bought this audiobook.… (más)