The Breath of a Whale

The Science and Spirit of Pacific Ocean Giants

By: Leigh Calvez

Narrated by: Karen White

Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

From the author of The Hidden Lives of Owls, an exploration of the elusive lives of whales in the Pacific Ocean, home to orcas, humpbacks, sperm, blue, and gray whales.

Leigh Calvez has spent a dozen years researching, observing, and probing the lives of the giants of the deep. Here, she relates the stories of nature's most remarkable creatures, including the familial orcas in the waters of Washington State and British Columbia; the migratory humpbacks; and the ancient, deep-diving blue whales, the largest animals on the planet. The lives of these whales are conveyed through the work of dedicated researchers who have spent decades tracking them along their secretive routes that extend for thousands of miles, gleaning their habits and sounds and distinguishing peculiarities. The author invites the listener onto a small research catamaran maneuvering among 100-foot-long blue whales off the coast of California; or to join the task of monitoring patterns of humpback whale movements at the ocean surface: tail throw, flipper slap, fluke up, or blow. To experience whales is breathtaking. To understand their lives deepens our connection with the natural world.

©2019 Leigh Calvez (P)2019 Tantor

please learn Hawaiian words if using in audio format

I generally enjoyed this story but was very frustrated with the narrator and their pronunciation of Hawaiian words. Really would recommend doing reach and learning to say words correctly before completing a full audiobook production

Insightful!

Informative, interesting and touching. I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about whales, their habits, how they are studied, and their plight. Well-written.

Amazing journey into the whale world

This book has been totally inspiring to me. It gives plenty of info about whale habits, social behavior and the more you read the more you get affectionate and respectful towards these animals. And I think that this is the author’s goal indeed.

Narration

I agree with most of the other reviews. The narration was a bit robotic and detracted from the beauty of the story. It is more an emotional look at whales rather than a scientific look.

The Breath of a Whale

Loved it, very informative. I learned a lot about whales and other sea life that I did not know.

Wonderful

I loved everything about the story and loved the narrator, she made me feel like I was there with them.

Wonderful book

The book is wonderful and insightful.
Unfortunately, the narration is robotic and not a great fit for the story.

Great tour of a few key cetaceans

I enjoyed listening to this book. Narration is a little bit robotic, but very clear. I see other reviews complaining that Hawaiian words were mispronounced, and that's disappointing, but it didn't change my experience.

The story meanders and does not follow a clear outline. The book as a whole feels more like a collection of essays than one single story. The author speaks of her own health challenges as a point to connect emotionally with whales but i don't feel like she told a complete story and every return to the theme of her leaving science or her health issues felt odd to me. I wish she had explored it more explicitly and tied it directly to the themes of the book. It's not that i didn't want to hear her story, but I felt confused about why she was telling us her story.

The science reporting consists more of showing us the day to day of what it's like to be on a research vessel tagging whales than teaching us what scientists know about whales. I would have enjoyed hearing more about experiments, shifting paradigms in marine mammalogy, and anatomical studies conducted on stranded individuals.

There is a strong emotional angle on conservation. I agree with the author's conviction that we need to do everything possible to respect and protect these fellow beings, and it makes me emotional as well, but I suspect some readers may be put off by the author's language around aspects of her interpretation of whale emotions and her own cosmology. That being said, the stories are heartfelt and I was moved to tears more than once.

I couldn't handle the narration

I was really excited about this book but the reader sounded very robotic and I couldn't continue. I hope they re-do this one. I would love to listen. I have never had this problem with an audio book before.

this is tiring. couldve been great!

learned alot. they are clearly in live with whales. but this couldve been a story instead of just facts. its almost like a documentary with little action