Review - Roar of the Sea

Book: Roar of the Sea

Author: Deb Vanasse

Release Date - Out now

Disclaimer: I received an ARC via a LibraryThing giveaway.

 

               When I was a child, there was a huge campaign to save baby seals  that were being clubbed for commercial fur (I think).  Anyway, the campaign got to the point where there were even stickers of Barbie saving the baby seals.  Commercial seal hunting still happens, but it wasn’t until I read this book that I learned that the debate over hunting seals simply for their fur has been happening for a heck of a lot longer than I thought.

               Vanasse details the struggle of Henry Wood Elliott to save the fur seals of Pribilof Islands, a group in the Bering Strait.  It should be noted that while Vanasse writes about the commercial killing of the seals by companies and pirates who just massively kill for the fur, she draws a distinct difference between that an the Indigenous population, the Unangax, does in terms of hunting for food.

               Vanasse tells the story primary using two men.  The first, Alex MacLean was a pirate, a man who slaughtered the seals illegally to sell their fur but who also inspired a character created by Jack London.  The second is Henry Wood Elliott himself, the aforementioned man who decided to save the seals.  What follows is a book that details how pirating of seal fur works and struggles in terms of law to protect the animals.

               Vanasse’s prose is invigorating, and while she could have easily been side tracked by or written a totally different book about MacLean, her focus on the seals  and Elliott are presented in a gripping way, even when Elliott is dealing with the political mess that is Washington.  While the book Is not a biography of either man,  Vanasse does deal with their personal lives, including their childhoods.  But she also does deal with the treatment of the Unangax under both Russian and American laws/hands.  This is important.

               The book is also relevant today not only because commercial seal hunting is ongoing but because we are still asking the questions about conservation, management (or even if we should manage as oppose to save), as well as trying to get the government to do anything.

               It should be noted that the focus of the book is on the saving of the seals, so it is not (nor is advertised as such) a book about the biology of the seals.  While Vanasse does touch on some of these aspects, it is not the center of this excellent book.