Gaelin Rosenwaks, author of Sperm Whales: The Gentle Goliaths of the Ocean, with a Forward by Carl Safina | Shorewords!

December 16, 2022

Come along to learn what Gaelin's newest book is about!

Gaelin Rosenwaks, marine scientist, filmmaker, and explorer, is no stranger to Shorewords listeners.  In June 2020 she talked about her passion for sperm whales that came from her experience as a two-year old who looked into the eye of a whale named Physty.  During Covid, she travelled several times to Dominica to swim with and photograph some of the sperm whales that congregate offshore.  The culmination of her trips to Dominica is a beautiful and interesting book about these ocean goliaths.  On Shorewords!, Gaelin talks with Lesley Ewing about the making of her book, many of the amazing feats of these mammals from the depths that they dive, to the size of their hearts, to their sleeping habits; and some of her favorite books.  

Show Transcription
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Lesley Ewing

Hello. I’m Lesley Ewing, host of Shorewords!. This podcast combines two of my favorite things – the ocean and books. I learned to swim before I could walk and looked forward each summer to my family’s vacation at Ocean City, Maryland. As a student I was interested in science and engineering and became an environmental engineer before learning that there was something called coastal engineering. Both my 1 st and 2 nd mid-life crises resulted in me going back to school – first for a Masters of Engineering at UC Berkeley and later for a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. The first crisis also moved me from DC to the SF Bay. The second crisis reminded me how much I liked to read. Getting a Ph.D. while working a 40+-hour/week job meant that my only reading was work reports, text books and technical articles. They were all important and interesting books, but as soon as school ended, I replaced my academic text books with broader literature and realized that the coast was often a character in the fiction and non-fiction that I read. I am still fascinated by every visit to the ocean and remain in awe of what others write about the coast.