A review by bookwoods
Fathoms: The World in the Whale by Rebecca Giggs

4.0

 Whales, the largest animals on this planet, have charismatic, near mystical qualities to them. Encountered by few but known to all, they are a fascinating focal point for examining our relationship to the natural world as a whole. And that’s exactly what Rebecca Giggs uses them for. Fathoms – The World in the Whale zooms into different aspects of whales from their ecological significance to the shapes they take in our imagination; whales as commodities and food, as sufferers of plastic pollution, as tourist attractions. 

Fathoms is written with a journalistic touch in prose filled with beautiful expressions, and I can only applaud Giggs for succeeding in her mission of effectively using these animals as a proxy for nature. She’s patient with her explanations and even as a biologist, I learned a lot! I was particularly interested in the ways whales can alter the climate and ocean chemistry, and how dramatically noise pollution limits whale communication. I also appreciated the look into whaling as it takes place today - Fathoms was published last year so the information is current. But some parts are just too long. With each chapter there seemed to come a point where everything that needed to be said was said, yet some filler-like text was included. Without it, I would consider Fathoms very near a perfect environmental nonfiction. Even as it is, it comes close. 

“To protect any wild animal now, the task is not to look for it, but to consider what it might depend on: the abundance of food, of shelter and paths of migration, the preservation of biophony, of oceanic chemistry and temperature within ranges tolerable to species other than our own; freedom from being crowded out by pollution. We must think about the sensory realities we wish to sustain for animals, and those we wish to protect them from. Both the suffocating love evoked by charisma, and the project of taxonomy – finding, naming, labeling – must give way before a duty to ecology. These are responsibilities to one another, as much as to wildlife, for what we lose when we lose animals is a way to imagine the world as larger than we experience it.”