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What better prognosis for a good read than a great protagonist, the leatherback turtle, and an author who has – so the dust jacket tells us – won awards for literature. But writing about seeing a leatherback emerge from the surf, he comes up with the following: “The sight of her is sufficiently astonishing to strike a deep gasp into my ribs”. This encapsulates the problems with this book: too often the writing is excruciating, too often the reactions of the author distract from the animal itself. Strunk & White (1999) admonish writers to place themselves in the background. But this is not so much an account of the voyage of the turtle as of the author’s travels to places where leatherbacks can be seen and studied, and the conversations he has with those engaged in that work.

In another passage, the author relates being shown the tracks of satellite monitored turtles on a computer screen. To heighten the mood he has to tell us when he draws his chair closer to the computer. A simple map showing migratory paths would make a more vivid and direct impression. Talking of figures, line drawings of O and J hooks, and of turtle excluder devices would also have been helpful.

It may be suspected that the best books about animals and their life histories are by those who have studied their subjects first hand, over a number of years, and become absorbed in the animals rather than themselves. Tinbergen’s (1953) Herring Gull World, and the books by Heinrich and those by Schaller come to mind.

Safina’s book does, however, provide a reasonably satisfactory introduction to some of the main questions about the conservation of sea turtles. The chapter set in Florida, albeit more about loggerhead and green turtles than leatherbacks, discusses whether turtles and people can coexist on the same beaches. The conclusion is a cautious yes.

Another vital topic is that of regional differences in survival prospects. The author recognizes that leatherbacks are doing much better in the Atlantic than in the Pacific. To his credit he does not over exploit brink-of-extinction hype, but neither does he delve deeply enough into the interesting question of why differences between ocean basins exist. Are other medusivores doing poorly in the Pacific? Are patterns of incidental catch responsible? If the causes of regional differences were understood, perhaps preventative measures could be instituted in the Atlantic. The danger of excessive egg harvest is highlighted but this is hardly a new idea.

Voyage of the Turtle is prone to errors and too ready acceptance of mere ideas as established fact. There is no solid evidence that the wrong incubation temperatures produce sterile intersex individuals. The leatherback is not the only reptile capable of maintaining its body temperature above ambient level: the brooding Indian python also does well in this respect. In the leatherback, thermogenic fat has not been demonstrated: this is only inference based on structure. That is why the original paper put a question mark after the part in its title about a “thermogenic organ”. And then there is that pink spot. Why is it that turtle enthusiasts are so fascinated by occurrences such as albino hatchlings and the pink spot on the top of the leatherback’s head? Safina relays the idea – twice, in disconnected places - that less pigmented skin lying over a thinner area of the skull allows light to reach the pineal and so govern responses to daylength. I am unaware of studies of light penetration, if that takes place at all, through different parts of sea turtle skulls. But Peter Pritchard does have a magnificent collection of leatherback skulls, crying out for this kind of investigation! Other errors include failing to get the quotation from Ogden Nash (about the turtle living “twixt plated decks”) exactly right.

Nevertheless, those who know little about sea turtles may learn something from this book, and about the allure of turtle work, on beaches, at sea and in the air. Whether this is the best place to learn such things is another matter. Structuring the narrative as a travelogue interspersed with mini expositions on biology makes for a disjointed presentation.

As a lament for the devastating effects of expanding humanity, in the oceans and on turtle beaches, the book is tolerably successful. It may please readers who can overlook or even enjoy the purple prose, the heapings of adjectives and similes, and the straining for cosmic overtones. For me the most effective passage was the account of the destructiveness of trawling for shrimp. The fancy writing gives way to an enumeration of the piles of gasping ocean life, several times greater than the amount of target species obtained; the non-shrimp portion, mostly edible, is swept overboard, dying and wasted. An account of a remotely controlled video dive to 200-1000 m or so is also well done, vivid, and a reminder that leatherbacks spend much time in an environment of whose physical characteristics and inhabitants we have no more than a rudimentary appreciation.

STRUNK W. & E.B. WHITE. 1999. The Elements of Style, 4th Edition. Longman, New York. 105pp.

TINBERGEN, N. 1953. Herring Gull World: A Study of the Social Behavior of Birds. Collins, New York. 255pp.

Reviewed by N. Mrosovsky, Department of Zoology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3G5 E-mail: mro@zoo.utoronto.ca

Title: Turtle Story
Year: 2006
Author: by Kartik Shanker with art by Maya Ramaswamy
Publisher: Pratham Books
ISBN: 81-8263-285-4
Pages: 24
Price: Rs 120 or US $12 <http://www.atree.org/order_ts.html>

In this picture book, Turtle Story, Kartik Shanker introduces us to a young olive ridley turtle floating in the sunlit Indian Ocean with a full belly and time to contemplate life. The tranquil mood is cut short by the arrival of a “really big fish” craving baby turtle soup. And so the little ridley’s odyssey begins as we follow her on her travels through the blue-green water, onto the seaweed rafts, to the coral reefs and eventually to nest herself.

Turtle Story introduces children to basic facts about sea turtles through conversations between the ridley and the other species she encounters. Most noteworthy is her chat with the kind leatherback, whom she deferentially calls “Sir,” as she marvels at his size and soft shell, and the competitive loggerhead, with a head both figuratively and literally big, as he sniffs at the distance of the ridley’s comparatively short migration. Although Shanker draws attention to the danger of natural predators, fishing gear, and human impacts on the nesting habitat, the story’s narrative force is drawn resolutely from the turtle completing her life cycle.

Narrative non-fiction, like Turtle Story, is a tricky genre. Shankir’s tale has difficulties that result from attempting to present a vast array of natural history fact through the eyes of an anthropomorphized animal. The narrative is not rich enough to free the reader from the sense that the book is primarily a recounting of turtle facts, as opposed to a story as its picture book format would suggest. The attempt to engage the audience through the character of the ridley presents problems from the purely scientific perspective that non-fiction requires: for example, the book’s ridley swims “carefully” so as to “avoid” fishing gear, and after she lays her eggs she is “happy” when she thinks about her own hatchlings’ lives. Elements of non-fiction writing, such as maps highlighting the many geographic locations described and a glossary, would also have enriched the book and made it a more useful teaching tool.

In general, Turtle Story is a pleasant read with an ultimately charming olive ridley at its core. What makes it a must-buy, however, are the truly beautiful illustrations by Maya Ramaswamy. Her work effortlessly balances the scientific with the imaginative, bringing the world of the olive ridley, both in and out of the ocean, into sharp focus.

Reviewed by Kathleen Martin, Canadian Sea Turtle Network, 2070 Oxford Street, Suite 110, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3L 2T2 Canada, E-mail: kmartin@seaturtle.ca