Book Reviews . . .
Stephanie Showalter

Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion
Alan Burdick (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2005).

Many of us dream of traveling to distant lands to experience new cultures and view exotic wildlife and plants. If we are lucky enough to reach our dream destinations, how many of us stop to wonder what else might have been on that boat or plane with us? Thankfully Alan Burdick, senior editor for Discover, did just that and the result of his musings and investigations is a fascinating journey into the world of invasion biology. From the island of Guam where scientists spend hours hunting the elusive brown tree snake to the heavily-invaded Hawaiian Islands where it is difficult to tell native from alien to San Francisco Bay where species from Asia and Europe live together seemingly in harmony, Burdick examines the side effects of humanity’s wanderlust. Out of Eden is in essence, as Burdick states, “a travel book about the natural consequences of travel.”

Out of Eden is worth reading for the last chapter alone. Burdick visits the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California where NASA’s attempts to prevent biocontamination of space have “created an environment that inadvertently fosters the very kind of life it is traveling so far beyond Earth to find.” Twenty-two species of microbe have already been discovered in the Spacecraft Assembly Facility. Lifeforms created by NASA may be out there right now just waiting to be “discovered.”

Beautifully written, Out of Eden is richly woven with the lives and work of leading scientists. Burdick accompanies James Carlton on a survey of exotic species in San Francisco Bay and David Foote as he collects drosophilas in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. I felt queasy just reading Burdick’s tales of the struggles of a graduate student collecting ballast water samples on a rolling deck. Out of Eden is a compelling tale of the impacts of human travel on the environment and the scientists who have dedicated their lives to studying them.

In his chronicle of the decades-long fight to save the striped bass, Dick Russell offers a first-hand account of the interplay of politics, public relations, and litigation that are present in all environment battles. The story of striped bass is also the story of Storm King mountain, the Westway Project, and Riverkeeper. It’s about George Mendonsa, a powerful commercial fishermen appointed to the Rhode Island Marine Fisheries Council with strong connections to Fulton Fish Market, and Bob Pond, the guilty inventor of the Atom Plug, an artificial lure quite popular with striped bass. It’s about recreational fishermen who organized and fought to save the fish they loved to catch. Russell’s account is filled with minor and fortuitous events - late-night phone calls, emergency meetings with government officials, newspaper articles, dinner conversations - that often spelled the difference between victory and defeat.

Striper Wars is truly an underdog story and Russell has the reader pulling for the striped bass from the very first chapter. It’s impossible not to want the little guys to win. Striped bass tipped the scales in the seminal Storm King case which established the right of citizen groups to sue to protect natural resources and set the stage for “environmental standing” - the bedrock of almost all current environmental litigation. Striped bass stopped a highway planned for Manhattan’s west side known as the Westway Project because the project would have a destroyed a significant amount of striped bass habitat in the Hudson River. Striper Wars is an invaluable primer on the importance and power of common citizen action.
In the end, Striper Wars is a cautionary tale. Striped bass may again be headed for trouble. Harvest levels have increased over the years and bycatch mortality is a serious problem. The striped bass’ preferred food, menhaden, is also overfished and some striped bass show signs of starvation. Pollution in the Hudson River and Chesapeake Bay and habitat loss remain perennial problems. Environmental victories take years to achieve, but are all too often fleeting. The lessons of the past must not be forgotten.

Alaska Sea Grant Publications Increase Knowledge of Alaska Ecosystems

The Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands: Region of Wonders
Terry Johnson (Alaska Sea Grant 2003).

The Gulf of Alaska: Biology and Oceanography
Phillip R. Mundy, ed. (Alaska Sea Grant 2005).

One of the primary missions of the National Sea Grant Program is to disseminate scientific information. Two recent publications of Alaska Sea Grant, The Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands and The Gulf of Alaska, fulfill this mission and more. The two publications, while targeting two very difference audiences - the general public and scientists and students, contribute significantly to our understanding of Alaskan ecosystems.

Few in the Lower 48 are familiar with the Bering Sea ecosystem, aside from some images of rogue waves and ice-covered decks gleaned from The Discovery Channel’s hit series The Deadliest Catch. The Bering Sea ecosystem covers over 885,000 square miles and is one of the most biologically rich in the world. Hundreds of species of fish, crab, coral, marine mammals, birds, and marine plants live in the Bering Sea providing food for each other, Native Russians and Alaskans, and people around the globe. The Bering Sea is also economically important. Tourism is growing and valuable oil and petroleum deposits may become more accessible in the future. The ecosystem, however, is facing major challenges as the result of declining fish and marine mammal populations, climate change, and pollution. The Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands, funded by the North Pacific Marine Research Program, will hopefully raise public awareness in Alaska and elsewhere about this amazing ecosystem.

The Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands is filled with over 450 beautiful color photographs and several informative maps and charts. A wide range of topics are covered including the physical environment (volcanism, glaciers, currents), sea life, culture, and commerce. Scattered throughout the book are sidebars on “Sea Science” which discuss some of the projects of Bering Sea researchers like the use of remote sensing technology to gather images of fish. The Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands comes with an audio cd containing nine radio interviews with scientists talking about their research in the Bering Sea, originally broadcast on Alaska Public Radio and a valuable addition to any library.

The Gulf of Alaska is not a publication for mass consumption, but rather a compilation of the scientific knowledge of the Gulf of Alaska Ecosystem Monitoring and Research (GEM) Program. Billed by Alaska Sea Grant as a “resources guide for scientists, students, and managers working in the Gulf of Alaska,” the book covers a wide range of topics over the course of eleven chapters including climate and weather, nearshore benthic communities, fish and shellfish, marine mammals, economics of human uses and activities, and modeling. With an extensive References list, The Gulf of Alaska is great introduction to the state of scientific knowledge and a good starting point for further investigations.

Additional information about these or other books published by Alaska Sea Grant is available at http://www.uaf.edu/seagrant/ .

University of Mississippi