THE ALBATROSS AND THE FISH: Linked Lives in the Open Seas. By Robin W. Doughty and Virginia Carmichael

THE ALBATROSS AND THE FISH: Linked Lives in the Open Seas. By ROBIN W. DOUGHTY AND VIRGINIA CARMICHAEL. xxiv and 302 pp.; maps, ills., bibliog., index. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 9780292726826. The list of plants and animals that humans have pushed up to or over the precipice of extinction includes many that captivate our imagination. Some are impressive for their superabundance: the passenger pigeon, American bison, and American chestnut. Some are so because of their physical size: the blue whale, California condor, and elephant bird. Others are intriguing for their uniqueness: the dodo, Tasmanian wolf, and great auk. This book details the plight of yet another imperiled creature, which has just claim to all three categories: the albatross. Robin Doughty and Virginia Carmichael have compiled a lucid and informative history of the plight of the albatross clan, seabirds that ply the skies over remote oceans and have worked their spell from The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner to the modern day. Albatrosses have the greatest wingspan of any bird, nest in colonies that can number hundreds of thousands of birds, and regularly cover astonishing distances at sea with amazing energetic efficiency, circumnavigating the Southern Ocean. Doughty and Carmichael cover all aspects of the albatross saga with this book, giving a well-rounded overview of the biology of these species, the history of albatross science, and the human political, economic, and social phenomena that have brought their near demise and may open the window for their recovery. Stories of individual conservationists who have championed the cause of particular nesting colonies are provided, as are timelines of important events in their dance with extinction. The book starts off on an impressive note, with a forward by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, who has supported albatross conservation. Then an eight-page section, "Milestones," provides an annotated timeline of important developments in the albatross saga from sixteenth-century descriptions of the birds up to 2005. Chapter 1 describes some of the personal experiences and perspectives that motivated the authors to create this volume. Chapter 2 recounts the history of human penetration of the remote pelagic habitat of albatrosses, from the ancient Maori through modern times. Chapter 3 gives the history of albatross science, and chapter 4 expands this by examining the banding efforts that discovered the huge distances these birds cover during their annual cycles. Chapter 5 describes the oceanographic home of these birds--the Southern Ocean--and the geographical placement of their remote nesting islands. This is helpful; most of us have seldom had reason to contemplate the whereabouts of Macquarie Island or Tristan da Cunha. Chapter 6 describes albatross taxonomy, which biologists are still sorting through, and includes a table listing the species and their populations, major nesting sites, and conservation status. This is one of the most memorable features of the book: The mental image of hundreds of thousands of birds crammed shoulder to shoulder reminds us that not only is the integrity of the oceanic ecosystem at risk, so are some of nature's greatest wildlife spectacles. …