The Whale Scientists

by Hodgkins, Fran

• ISBN13: 9780618556731
• ISBN10: 0618556737
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-11-12
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

A informative and compassionate Scientists in the Field title about the often fatal strandings occurring worldwide.They began as land creatures. Then, for more plentiful food, or so scientists believe, whales made the water their home and evolved into the colossal, majestic creatures of the sea that we know today-the same majestic creatures that humans learned to hunt and kill: first for food and then for oil, soap, candles, furniture, and even wasp-waist corsets. Rich in meat, blubber, bone, and baleen, the whale served so many purposes for humans that its stranding was seen as a gift from the sea.But now, with their numbers diminished worldwide, whales have become the subject of scientific study. Humans hunt now for a deeper understandig of cetaceans. Why would the world's largest mammal do something that would most likely cause it to die? Around the world, scientists are trying to find the answer.

Author Biography

Fran Hodgkins’s lifelong passion for marine biology and journalism inspired her to write about the very creatures that captured her imagination when she was a child.Fran now lives outside Baltimore, Maryland.