Voyage of the Turtle: In Pursuit of the Earth's Last Dinosaur

Carl Safina

Henry Holt and Company, Apr 1, 2007 - Nature - 400 pages

The story of an ancient sea turtle and what its survival says about our future, from the award-winning writer and naturalist

Though nature is indifferent to the struggles of her creatures, the human effect on them is often premeditated. The distressing decline of sea turtles in Pacific waters and their surprising recovery in the Atlantic illuminate what can go both wrong and right from our interventions, and teach us the lessons that can be applied to restore health to the world’s oceans and its creatures. As Carl Safina’s compelling natural history adventure makes clear, the fate of the astonishing leatherback turtle, whose ancestry can be traced back 125 million years, is in our hands.

Writing with verve and color, Safina describes how he and his colleagues track giant pelagic turtles across the world’s oceans and onto remote beaches of every continent. As scientists apply lessons learned in the Atlantic and Caribbean to other endangered seas, Safina follows leatherback migrations, including a thrilling journey from Monterey, California, to nesting grounds on the most remote beaches of Papua, New Guinea. The only surviving species of its genus, family, and suborder, the leatherback is an evolutionary marvel: a “reptile” that behaves like a warm-blooded dinosaur, an ocean animal able to withstand colder water than most fishes and dive deeper than any whale.

In his peerless prose, Safina captures the delicate interaction between these gentle giants and the humans who are finally playing a significant role in their survival.

What people are saying

Review: Voyage of the Turtle: In Pursuit of the Earth's Last Dinosaur

User Review  - Eson - Goodreads

I adore turtles, so this seemed like the perfect book. The narrative was very smoothly written from the perspective of a man learning more and more as he goes. That's a nice approach that makes it ...

Review: Voyage of the Turtle: In Pursuit of the Earth's Last Dinosaur

User Review  - Stefanie - Goodreads

Carl Safina's book is packed with information about sea turtles -- particularly the Leatherback Sea Turtle - and it's told in beautiful prose, mixing natural history and narrative. If you wish to ...

About the author

Carl Safina, author of The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World, Voyage of the Turtle: In Pursuit of the Earth's Last Dinosaur, Eye of the Albatross: Visions of Hope and Survival, Song for the Blue Ocean: Encounters Along the World's Coasts and Beneath the Seas, and founder of the Blue Ocean Institute, was named by the Audubon Society one of the leading conservationists of the twentieth century. He's been profiled by The New York Times, and PBS's Bill Moyers. His books and articles have won him a Pew Fellowship, Guggenheim Award, Lannan Literary Award, John Burroughs Medal, and a MacArthur Prize. He lives in Amagansett, New York.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Voyage of the Turtle: In Pursuit of the Earth's Last Dinosaur
• Author: Carl Safina
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Company, 2007
• ISBN: 1429900865, 9781429900867
• Length: 400 pages
• Subjects: Nature / Animals / Reptiles & Amphibians; Nature / Ecosystems & Habitats / Oceans & Seas