Susan Casey

Susan Casey's The Underworld, a book about deep sea exploration, has received rave reviews, but I found myself underwhelmed. Substantively, her book contains very little information that isn't already online: this is not new information, but old material, presented newly. Unfortunately, this leads to two major shortcomings.

First, the chief value she adds to existing information is a series of in-depth interviews with people engaged in exploring and studying the deep sea. Her interviews, show more however, border on hagiographic - in fact, she goes out of her way to dismiss and defend some of them against serious concerns about the colonial nature of their endeavours, instead of taking these arguments seriously, as they ought to be. It feels as though she uncritically accepts and believes anything she's told: her scepticism is reserved only for a museum docent who mansplains, she says, and has nothing to do with the subject material of the book. I'm not the only one to feel this way: in the Scientific American, a review notes that "Although Casey pays lip service to Vescovo's critics, The Underworld would have benefited from a more thorough examination of ocean exploration's politics and power dynamics. In the 21st century, must our most celebrated adventurers remain impossibly rich white guys?" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/todays-deep-sea-explorers-are-mineral... It is particularly acute when you realise that Vescovo, a rich hobbyist explorer who receives fulsome praise from Casey, is also known for doing reckless solo dives and freewheeling on safety precautions. After the Triton sub incident, and the vast amount of public funds expended on attempting to rescue the rich and reckless, can we afford to be so flippant about the subject?

Second, when you have no new research to contribute, but you write an essay, the expectation is that you write in a manner that presents the information lucidly, in a way that is engaging to the reader, and a pleasure to read. Otherwise, you're writing a high school science report. I found her writing passable at best, and often amateurish, bordering on egregious. Debris around the wreck of the Titanic is described as a "piñata of tragedy". When she's not being flippantly funny, she's buried deep in the purplest of prose, as though she had never come across an adjective or a cliche she didn't immediately want to insert in her book. Perhaps I'm being a little harsh - it's clear that she's passionate about the ocean, cares deeply about conservation, and loves the water. Still, when the quality of nature writing is set to a high bar by authors like Helen MacDonald, Robin Wall Kimmerer, or Camille Dungy, it's hard to accept this level of glib, uncritical pedestrian prose. I'm sure Booktok will enjoy it. show less

I have mixed feelings about Susan Casey's newest book, The Wave. She's the author of one of my favorite non-fiction books last year, The Devil's Teeth, which was one of those scattershot approaches to science and history that are so popular right now. You know, the kind of book which gives you a bunch of fun facts and exciting anecdotes about a subject, without going into too much detail or challenging the reader with difficult bits of the science. It sounds terrible, but when it works, it's show more entertaining and gives the reader a good jumping off point for further reading. In the case of The Devil's Teeth, Casey took the Farallons, a group of hostile islands west of San Francisco, and created an enticing mix of history and natural science (birds, sharks and currents) that was hard to put down.

She's less successful in The Wave and I'm not sure whether it was that the topic was too broad to be handled as the stream of consciousness of someone who is easily distracted, or because the heart of the book was not in a place that interested me. The concept of the book is that until recently it was believed that waves of 100 feet or more were simply impossible from the point of view of basic physics; the weight of the water would cause the wave to collapse upon itself before it grew that high, and eyewitness accounts (which are rare, for reasons of drowning) were overstated due to understandable excitement. Then an 850-foot long cargo ship went down in a storm and the wreck showed damage high up on it's structure. An oil platform was also hit by a rogue wave of over 100 feet high and damage to the structure proved the oil workers were not making things up.

Half of the chapters are about how scientists are studying the physics of waves, how global warming is influencing the size of waves (hint: they are getting bigger), describing instances of giant waves and their aftermath and in discussing how we are reacting to the challenge of rogue waves. This was all excellent, although I would have liked a great deal more. She only describes one event in any detail and the book would have benefited from describing more dramatic events and with paying more attention to them. I would have also liked more of the science, which seems to be complex and speculative.

The other half of the book, told in alternating chapters, was a sort of sports article about a year in the life of surfing king Laird Hamilton, who developed something called tow-surfing. As waves get bigger, they also get faster, so that traditional surfing, where the surfer paddles out to the wave and "catches" it no longer works. Instead, the surfer is chauffeured out to the wave on a jet ski and sort of flung at speed onto its face. The jet ski then drives round the wave to rescue the surfer at the end of his ride. This would have made a great twenty pages or so, but Casey looooves the daredevil romance of it all, in which Hamilton and his entourage of fellow surfers and photographers travel the world to ride the enormous waves generated by storms at sea, and describes day after day of Hamilton's surfing exploits in Hawai'i, California, Mexico and Tahiti. Frankly, Hamilton comes across as an entitled asshat and I quickly grew tired of his complaints about how surfing is no longer the pure sport he practices (as supported by his corporate sponsorships), or how he hates competitions (as he travels with photographers on hand to film his majestic rides) and anyone surfing where he wants to surf. I'm not someone who would pick up a sports biography, so I'm clearly not the right person to comment on that half of the book, but it became a little repetitive over time.

Still, the central topic is fascinating and anything written about our changing oceans is worth a read. show less

“How do you think humans got so cruel?” I asked Makili. He gazed at the ocean, then back at Turner and me. “We forgot,” he said, letting the words linger. “We forgot our responsibility. And we forgot that we are as equal as any living thing within the chain. There’s no hierarchy in this. Nah. We are part of the same family: living things. All the rest of it is just totally fucking bullshit.”

Dolphins have to be the coolest creatures, on earth and that includes human beings. show more Dolphins are not vicious, dishonest, vindictive or blood-thirsty. They are smart, family orientated and generally kind. We kill them and exploit them. This is what we do.
I really enjoyed Casey's book, The Wave, about monster waves and the surfer community. In this one, she sets her sights on dolphins and other sea mammals, like killer whales, which are also kick-ass. She traveled thousands of miles, to research, protest and swim with these blissful creatures. She also connected with many fine people, along the way, who have made it their life mission, to protect these wonderful animals.
Fair warning- This book is not for the faint of heart. Cruelty abounds here and Casey hammers it home, like a pile-driver. She does not mince words, but if you can stomach it, it is a very well-written, heartfelt look at nature's best.

**Also, the audiobook is excellent. Just sayin'... show less

I must say I was mightily relieved to be finished with this one. Not that it isn't good...it's too good. It is subtitled "A Journey into the Wild and Haunting World of Dolphins", but I think that's misleading. It is more a journey into the harrowing and horrifying world of dolphin exploitation and abuse. As I listened to it on audio, I can't go back through the book and cite examples, but the overwhelming feeling I had during most of it was "I can't take much more of this". Wholesale show more slaughter and heartless captivity conditions, even in the big-name theme parks we've all heard of...these marvelous, intelligent creatures have been very badly served by humanity in the last few centuries...by modern societies and primitive ones alike. Their teeth used for currency; their bodies contaminated by pollutants; their environment bombarded by sonar, the noise of ship engines, drilling rigs and naval war games; their lives appropriated for human entertainment or experimentation, whole pods slaughtered for political or monetary gain. Casey has interviewed a number of activists who are risking their own lives to try to stop some of the worst abuses; as well as one researcher who decided to give up her work, which she had come to view as unethical; and Joan Ocean, a new age guru from "Dolphinville" in Hawaii who claims to have a mystic, spiritual relationship with cetaceans. Dolphins have no autonomic nervous system and must consciously breathe. Therefore, if they are stunned they can "drown" because they stop breathing. There is also anecdotal evidence that depressed individuals have simply refused to take another breath, effectively committing suicide.

Thankfully, Casey concluded her book with visits to ancient Minoan sites on the Isle of Crete, where back in the Bronze Age they apparently appreciated and lived in harmony with nature and its other creatures, particularly those dwelling in the sea around them. Their art is glorious, even after all these centuries buried under rock and ash from the volcanic eruption that apparently eradicated their civilization. A Google search for images is worth your time. Casey's writing is very fine, and the reading performance by Cassandra Campbell on the audio version was outstanding. This is important stuff, and if you can stand it, I recommend it.

December 2015 show less