Voices in the Ocean: a journey into the wild and haunting world of dolphins

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2015 GOODREADS CHOICE AWARDS 'BEST SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY BOOK'Since the dawn of history, humans have felt a kinship with dolphins.

But these playful aquatic creatures are also mysterious: scientists still don't fully understand their sophisticated navigation and communication abilities, or their complicated brains.In 2010, following her father's death, Susan Casey had a remarkable encounter with a pod of spinner dolphins off the coast of Maui.

It inspired her on a two-year global adventure to learn about these beautiful animals.

Casey visits a Hawaiian community that believes dolphins are the key to enlightenment; travels to Ireland to meet 'the world's most loyal dolphin', and visits Crete to explore the ancient Minoans' interdependence on the animals.Yet dolphins are also the subjects of a sinister lucrative global trade.

Casey's reportage takes her to the harrowing epicentre in the Solomon Islands, and to the Japanese town of Taiji, made infamous by the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove, where she chronicles protests against the annual slaughter of dolphins.In the tradition of Susan Orlean and Donovan Hohn, Voices in the Ocean is a thrilling, compassionate, imperative account of the other intelligent life on the planet.PRAISE FOR SUSAN CASEY'[W]hat starts out as a feelgood, new-agey account darkens like the sunlight diminishing in the deep, subtly turning into a devastating chronicle of one of the most egregious mismatches in natural-human history.

The result is a brilliantly written and passionate book ... timely and urgent.' The Guardian'Part science, part memoir, part impassioned plea for change, Casey's look at the world of dolphins - and our mistreatment of - fascinates.' People