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BOOK REVIEWS 
THE WHALE: MIGHTY 
MONARCH OF THE SEA 
by Jacques-Yves Cousteau 
Doubleday and Co., 1972 
$9.95 
The decline in once vast numbers 
of all species of whale has fo- 
cused greater public attention upon 
these huge marine marvels. The 
voyage of the Calypso took Captain 
Cousteau and his crew from the 
Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean 
through the Panama Canal and 
along the North American coastline 
to the Aleutian Islands. Though 
the trip was begun in February of 
1967, it was not until March 14, 
1968, that the cry of “whales” was 
heard off the Island of Socotra in 
the Indian Ocean. 
Attempts were made — success- 
fully — to film the activity of 
whales both below and above the 
water surface. The volume con- 
tains 124 full-color photographs. 
Some are remarkable; two of the 
pictures show one of the divers 
feeding a killer whale. I had the 
pleasure of seeing diving whales 
when on our trip to Alaska, and 
last summer, along with many 
other tourists, we saw “Shamu, the 
Killer Whale” at the Sea World in 
San Diego. 
Cousteau reveals some important 
data about gray whales: They swim 
all night long without stopping, 
but they sleep in half-hour “naps” 
six or seven times a day. They eat 
while they are migrating. The data 
was collected during a cruise from 
San Diego to Mancanitas Bay in 
Baja California. 
There is a brief comment upon 
the heartbeat of the whale. Ameri- 
can cardiologist Dr. Paul Dudley 
White found that an elephant has 
a rate of 30 heartbeats a minute. He 
took a reading on a_ grounded 
whale in Scammon Bay and found 
a heartbeat of 27 per minute, but 
the normal rate has now been es- 
tablished at nine per minute, in- 
dicating that the larger the animal, 
the slower the heartbeat. Birds, of 
course, have an unusually fast 
heartbeat. 
One chapter of the book is de- 
voted to the love life of the whale 
while another is devoted to the 
value of the low waters of Baja 
California which serve as a nur- 
sery for the young whales. Cou- 
steau points out that this Mexican 
coast is blessed with a “savage 
isolation,’ dotted with sand dunes, 
bare of any vegetation. It is here 
in Scammon Bay where young 
whales are given birth, The bay 
was discovered over a century ago 
by Captain Scammon, who once 
noted whale spouts and followed 
them to their origin. For a decade, 
he and his crew slaughtered the 
huge monsters who came to rest at 
the bay. To the credit of the 
government of Mexico, internation- 
al treaties now protect the bay and 
its inhabitants. 
One of the calypso crew, Ted 
Walker, points out that males can 
often be distinguished from females 
by the shapes of their heads. In 
the case of the gray whale, he re- 
veals that a sexual encounter will 
always include two males to one 
