Sleek and Deadly: Prowling the Seas: Exploring the Hidden World of Oean Predators by Pamela S. Turner

The bluefin tuna are hunting.

A leatherback sea turtle glides below the bluefin. As she flaps her long front flippers, she looks like a bird flying in slow motion. High above, lost, in the
clouds, a seabird flies on silent wings.

A great white shark swims nearby. Her coal-black eyes roll toward the surface. She is looking for a seal

What do tuna, sea turtles, seabirds, and a great white have in common? All are predators, carnivores who depend upon the sea for their prey and whose lives revolve around the daily quest for food. Few of us realize that most of earth's predators, unlike the familiar wolf, tiger, or anaconda, live not on the land, but in the seas of the world. Vital to the life cycle of the ocean as they are on land, ninety per cent of the ocean's one-time predators, large fish such as sharks and tunas, are gone, and the remnant is struggling to hang on to viable breeding stock numbers.

Pamela Turner's Prowling the Seas: Exploring the Hidden World of Ocean Predators (Walker, 2009) traces the efforts of marine scientists to unlock the secrets of the seas' great predators in a race to keep them swimming and flying in their natural homes.

Turner tells of the tagging of female turtles and their annual race to the Galapagos, the tagging of juvenile tuna which swim an heroic marathon from the coast of California to the coastal waters of Japan where they find their way into a fisherman's catch to become sushi on someone's table. She relates the story of a Kindergartner who finds a strange object in a tidal pool which is turns out to be a great white shark tag with data tracing its bearer from the U.S. Pacific Coast to waters off Hawaii and back again. Scheduled to pop off and relay its data from the sea surface to a space satellite, the tag was apparently dislodged by bites from another shark, where it floated into tidal waters. And finally she tells how a mated pair of tagged shearwater seabirds on an island off New Zealand rode the "westerlies" all the way to the Humboldt Current off the coast of South America; there the pair split, the male heading for Japan while the female flies up the coast to Oregon and back, both returning to the same spot in New Zealand in time for the nesting season.

Turner points out that scientists learn many things from this vital data about ocean predators, but the main "lesson from the blue" is that the web of life is wide and takes its dependent animals to far-flung places, through many territorial waters affected by many wide-ranging forces. The author's thesis is that the ocean is a world-wide phenomenon with no national boundaries, and those that live from it have a fragile existence. More information can help us do what we can to help preserve their role on the seas.

An appendix offers detailed information about the featured animals--leatherneck sea turtles, bluefin tuna, white sharks, and sooty shearwaters--and a list of resources which includes recent books, DVDs, and web sites for students and teachers, including Google Ocean and the Smithsonian Institution.

Nonfiction That Makes the Grade: The Coral Reef by Philip Johansson

No marine scene on this planet holds more fascinating forms of life, is more threatened by changes in habitat, or is more spellbinding for us air breathers than the coral reefs of the world. Philip Johansson's The Coral Reef: A Colorful Web of Life (Wonderful Water Biomes) takes middle readers along with marine biology researchers for a closer and, shall we say, deeper look at this thrilling and threatened biome of planet Earth.

Along the way the reader meets some of the 4,000 species of fish and thousands of other plants and animals which join together in the web of life which makes up the world's coral reefs. We learn where in the world these coral reefs are found, how they are built on the rock-like limestone base laid down by generations of corals to form a habitat for lifeforms from plankton to worms, mollusks to crustaceans, fish and even birds and mammals drawn to this teeming source of food and life. Johansson likens the coral reef to the rain forest and to "bustling cities" in which "fantastic animals of every color dart in and out of buildings of coral..., schools of fish cruise along the main streets, [and] parks of algae wave in the currents."

In this interdependent world each plant and animal plays its strategic part, parts which are a delicately balanced commerce of plants, herbivores, carnivores, and detritivores who make up the food chains and food web of the reef. Types of reefs (barrier, atoll, and shoreline) are described and contrasted, and coral reef plants and coral reef animals are given full treatment in separate chapters, while dazzling color photos extend the text on each page. Johansson gives a nod to familiar reef inhabitants such as the black-tipped shark and moray eel, but most of the attention is given to the characteristics and role of more unfamiliar creatures such as the coralline alga plant which secretes a type of "pink cement" which reinforces crumbling portions of the reef or the algae-eating flower sea urchin, which like a venomous vacuum slowly patrols and eats the overgrowth of algae which would otherwise kill the coral polyps on which the biome depends.

Summaries of main points follow each chapter, and backmatter includes a glossary, a bibliography of books and internet sites, and an index. Other books in Enslow Publishing's Wonderful Water Biomes series are The Seashore: A Saltwater Web of Life (Wonderful Water Biomes), Marshes and Swamps: A Wetland Web of Life (Wonderful Water Biomes), and Lakes and Rivers: A Freshwater Web of Life (Wonderful Water Biomes).

Nonfiction That Makes the Grade: Coral Reefs by Gail Gibbons

Here in the sunny South school is in its last month, state standardized tests have been bubbled in, and legions of big, yellow buses are rolling out on the annual elementary field trips, and a lot of those buses are parking their passengers inside science museums and aquariums all over the countryside.

Making these trips a real learning experience (outside of the inevitable choral experience of "99 Bottles of *Censored* on the Wall") means prepping students for what they are going to see, and Gail Gibbons' recent Coral Reefs is a great nonfiction trade book which covers the basics on coral reef ecology.

Gibbons packs a plethora of information about reefs into what looks like a colorful picture book. Covered are the world map locations of coral reefs, the three types of coral reefs (shoreline, barrier, and atoll), the three zones of reefs (shore, crest reef, and fore reef), the two types of coral polyps (soft and hard), day and night variations on coral reefs, and illustrations of the many plants and animals--from tiny zooplankton and algae to huge mantas and groupers--that survive symbiotically in the coral reef biome. Gibbons points up the crucial conditions for coral reef development, crystal clear water which admits sunlight, algae which live inside the coral polyps and carry on photosynthesis which provides the sugar upon which the coral feeds, and critical water temperatures between 64 degrees and 88 degrees.

The vivid watercolor and black line illustrations show the whole process, with many inset enlargements to depict structure and function, and there are hundreds of reef-loving animals shown in their favorite reef habitat. A special double-page spread is devoted to Australia's Great Barrier Reef and some of its inhabitants-- a Nemo-like clownfish in his sea anemone comfort zone, pincushion urchins, bubble coral, a long-horned cowfish, and crown of thorns starfish, for example. An illustrated section featuring facts and figures about coral reefs is also appended.