Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas
When graduate student Saulitis volunteered to help study a group of killer whales, or orcas, in Prince William Sound in 1988, she set her life’s course and found herself in paradise. A year later that paradise was lost when the wrecked Exxon Valdez spilled millions of gallons of oil into the pristine sea. Saulitis continues to study one extended family of mammal-eating orcas, though her painstaking research into how they communicate has been shadowed by her witnessing their rapid extinction, poisoned in a contaminated world. Looking back while receiving treatment for breast cancer, Saulitis displays a power of recall and a gift for precise, poetic description that are exceptional and deeply affecting. We feel as though we, too, are soaked with fog and rain, struggling with a camera, and elated at the sight of the magnificent, mysterious orcas. Saulitis’ stunning and sorrowful “book of contemplation” elucidates the discipline, tedium, danger, and bliss of whale studies; the solace she finds in art; and her intense relationships with her fellow orca experts. Candid, transfixing, and cautionary, Saulitis celebrates and mourns for a wondrous and imperiled species. --Donna Seaman