The Nature Pages

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	Listening to Whales What the Orcas Have Taught Us  by Alexandra Morton Ballantine Books, 2002
	Schooled by the controversial dolphin researcher Dr. John Lilly and 25 years of first-hand experience with wild whales and dolphins, Alexandra Morton is one of those radical free-thinkers who believes that the ocean's mammals are not only intelligent and communicative, but worthy of our respect and attention. This memoir follows the development of Morton's career as one of the world's most prominent killer whale researchers, from her early days with Lilly's language experiments to her own studies of the language and habits of orcas along the coast of British Columbia. For more than 30 years the fishing hamlet of Alert Bay, British Columbia, was the center of the world for wild orca researchers and Morton flourished as a prominent expert in acoustical communication. She writes movingly about the idyllic life she led there with her husband, photographer Robin Morton, and their baby boy until Robin died tragically in a diving accident.		"Before the advent of marine parks, killer whales had all too often been considered the wolves of the ocean, nomadic man-eaters, good for nothing but catching a bullet. But thanks to parks like Marineland and Sea World... public opinion has swung to the opposite extreme. By the late 1970s, orcas had become Disney-fied. They were considered obedient, cute, tongue-wagging performers, tame enough for petting, and the children I observed were learning that it was a human right to enslave, harm, and ridicule another creature just for fun."
	"Robin, Jarret, and I went out in the Zodiac every day, determined to encounter and identify every whale that came through the archipelago. We had no idea of their travel patterns, so we covered as much water as we could. Freezing cold didn't slow us down; only a real storm kept us in for the day," she recalls.		by John C. Lilly The Mind of the Dolphin: A Nonhuman Intelligence
	Morton's memoir follows the course of events chronologically, from her 1950s childhood in Connecticut to her present-day struggle to stop fish farms from poisoning and infecting whales with pollution and virus-infected salmon.		"I'm constantly listening and looking for whales. As I wake my six-year-old daughter, cook breakfast, brush my teeth, talk on the phone, my ear remains cocked to the speakers. My eyes constantly scan the water for the misty plume of a whale blow."
	Both the story of a determined woman with a passion for interspecies communication and a natural history of wild orcas, this book is both engrossing and educational.
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