As Glenn Shorrock both wrote and sang in Little River Band’s 1979 song Cool Change,
Well I was born in the sign of water
And it’s there that I feel my best
The albatross and the whales they are my brothers
It’s a song I’ve long felt described me remarkably well. I was born in a hospital less than one hundred meters away from the lower Columbia River, to a family who for generations had made its living from that river and the Pacific Ocean just beyond its mouth. I was helping my father with the nets by the time I was eight, and could pilot a boat long before I could drive a car. The water and the fish that lived in it were not just our livelihood, they were our life.
From a young age, the fish we caught fascinated me. The sleek, bluish-silver salmon, the prehistoric-looking sturgeon, and especially the upward-staring Starry Flounder. We didn’t try to catch flounder, but when we set a drift over a shallower area of the river a few would usually be caught-up in the net. Too small to be enmeshed, these fascinatingly flat fish would immediately fall to the deck of the boat when we hauled in, and it was one of my first jobs to quickly pick them up and return them to the water. Perhap it was this close contact with fish that inspired my curiosity. Why were flounders flat with both eyes on the same side of their heads? Why did sturgeon look like they belonged to the long lost world of the dinosaurs? And most important of all, what else lived below the surface of the water that I had still yet to see?
Not surprisingly, over the past four decades I’ve read quite a number of books about marine life – among these of course being Dr. Helen Scales’ Poseidon’s Steed and Spirals in Time; both of which I found thoroughly engrossing and filled with information that was wholly new to me. Thus when I read that she had written a third book of popular marine biology, Eye of the Shoal; A Fishwatcher’s Guide to Life, the Ocean and Everything, I wasted no time in obtaining a copy as my readings of both her previous books gave me every reason to think it would also be a noteworthy book. I was not wrong.
Beginning with a very informative, connection-building chapter on the history of the early studies of and books about fish that would eventually coalesce and develop into modern ichthyology, followed by one of the most clearly understandable overviews of the evolutionary history and taxonomy of the fishes themselves that I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading, Dr. Scales continues on to interweave story after story about some of the world’s most familiar as well as obscure species of fish with reflections upon her own time spent diving beneath the waves to undertake studies of them.
Indeed, by deftly threading such lines of scientific as well as personal narrative together, and dividing each chapter with short interludes of fish-themed mythological stories from cultures all around the world, Dr. Scales creates a structure in Eye of the Shoal that is full of life, perpetually and gently shifting in its central focus – much like the the image brought to mind by her book’s title. This then, coupled with her extensive knowledge of the subject matter, melds seamlessly with her considerable talent as a writer that gives the entire work a free and easily-accessible style well-suited to both those new to the subject as well as more experienced ichthyology enthusiasts.
However as Dr. Scales clearly explains, if one is to understand the world’s fishes, it is vitally important to understand the watery world in which they live. Light, color, sound – all these things are experienced astonishingly differently below the waves from how they are perceived in our own airy environment. And it is largely because of these differences that fish have evolved some of their more remarkable physical and behavioral attributes that we see in them today. Richly illustrating the differences between how we perceive these phenomena with how fish perceive them, Dr. Scales makes it clearly intelligible to all that not only do these differences exist but why they do, imparting to her readers not only information on her specific subject but on a host of others – such as optics, acoustics, and general physics – as well.
For me, Eye of the Shoal is not only a fascinating book of natural history, it is a reminder of my own history; of my first scientific love and of the sublime beauty I have long found in the world beneath the waves. So inspiring was it that mid-way through my reading I packed it into my shoulder bag and made the three hour drive from our home to the Oregon Coast Aquarium just to spend a few hours reading about, contemplating, and simply looking at fish face-to-face in the shadowy, filtered blue light of the tank-filled galleries. I was once again “in the sign of water.” It was calming, refreshing, and enlivening. It was a coming home – even if only for a few hours – to a place I never should have left. No book I’ve previously read on any subject has caused me to take such an impulsive action, nor has any offered me so much new information about a subject in which I had thought myself already well-informed.
There is little more that should need to be said; make it a point at your earliest opportunity to obtain and read a copy of Eye of the Shoal and see if it doesn’t instill in you as well a profound change in the way you understand the world’s fishes and the watery world in which they live.
Title: Eye of the Shoal; A Fishwatcher’s Guide to Life, the Ocean and Everything
Author: Dr. Helen Scales
Publisher Bloomsbury
Imprint: Sigma
Format: Hardback
Pages: 320 pp.
ISBN: 9781472936844
Published: May 2018
In accordance with Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255, it is disclosed that the copy of the book read in order to produce this review was provided gratis to the reviewer by the publisher.
