Inland - Softcover

Capone, Lisa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0945980922 ISBN 13: 9780945980926

Publisher: North Country Press, 2011

Synopsis

This is the true story of a humpback whale named "Inland," and the people who came to know her during the autumn she spent close to shore in Salem, Massachusetts. The book is set in Salem Harbor, where local resident Kerry Griffin was stunned one morning when a twenty-eight foot long humpback whale surfaced right beside his dinghy as he was hauling up lobster traps. Griffin told Salem's harbormaster and others. Soon, news of the whale spread by word of mouth and through the Boston media. Hundreds of people came to watch the whale spout and breach, sometimes just fifty feet from shore. Mason Weinrich, chief scientist at The Whale Center of New England in Gloucester came to observe the whale, and named her "Inland" because she stayed close to land and her fluke markings looked like the letters I and L. After thrilling crowds in Salem for several weeks, Inland swam out to sea in late December, 2000. Researchers soon lost track of her as she migrated south for the winter. In April 2001, researchers in Massachusetts learned that Inland died after getting tangled in fishing gear off of the Virginia coast. The Whale Center of New England created a silver lining from the dark cloud of Inland's death by recovering her skeleton and hiring Maine scientist Dan DenDanto to undertake the process of reassembling it at the Center's headquarters. There, it now serves as an effective tool - telling Inland's story and teaching visitors about humpbacks, the threats they face, and how to help. Author Lisa Capone, a Boston Globe correspondent covering the North Shore of Massachusetts at the time of Inland's visit to the region, interweaves narrative and dialogue with facts about humpbacks, conservation concerns, and the fascinating but little-known process of "rearticulating" a whale skeleton.

About this title

About the Author

Lisa Capone was a professional journalist for more than 20 years before becoming Press Secretary for the Massachusetts Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs in February 2007. In addition to the Boston Globe, she has had articles published in numerous newspapers and magazines, including Teacher, Animals, The Boston Parents Paper, The Gulf of Maine Times, Outdoors, E The Environmental Magazine, and Conservation Sciences (for five years she was managing editor of this quarterly journal published by the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences in southeastern Massachusetts). She was also author of The ConservationWorks Book, published in 1991 by AMC Books.

Edition details

• Publisher: North Country Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0945980922
• ISBN 13: 9780945980926
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 64