Join Lynda V. Mapes and guests for a conversation about the history and the future of Orca whales in Puget Sound. Registration required. Click here to register via EventBrite. 

In 2018 Lynda Mapes, award-winning Seattle Times environment reporter, brought to world-wide audiences the story of Tahlequah, the mother orca whale who circled the Salish Sea for more than 1,000 miles and for 17 days with her pod while clinging to the dead newborn calf she would not give up.

Now readers of Lynda’s previously acclaimed books, Breaking Ground, The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and the Unearthing of Tse-whit-zen Village; Elwha, A River Reborn; and Witness Tree, Seasons of Change with a Century Old Oak, can welcome:

Orca: Shared Waters, Shared Home

(Braided River/Mountaineers Books co-published with The Seattle Times)

Lynda exposes the roots of the extinction crisis facing the southern resident orca pods who call the Salish Sea home. Their story is inseparable from the story of the salmon, the orcas’ food source, who also now are struggling to survive.  Where orcas and salmon have prospered for eons, now a fast-changing human-dominated world has shattered their environment.  Drawing from experts’ accounting of history, biology, ecology, and animal and human culture, enriched by her own eyewitness reporting, Lynda raises the fundamental question. What does it mean – and what will it take – for humans, orcas and salmon to live successfully together in the place we species all call home.

The virtual launch will feature Lynda and three eminent guests deeply attuned to the southern resident orcas, their past, their present and their future: Jay Julius, lifelong fisherman and former chairman of the Lummi Nation; Deborah Giles, research director of Wild Orca, and Jason Colby, environmental historian and chairman of the history department at the University of Victoria.  The launch event will be moderated by Seattle broadcast journalist Jeff Renner, who personally met his first orca face-to-face through a scuba mask years ago. 

Orca: Shared Waters, Shared Home is a stunning book. Rich in Lynda’s deeply personal natural history writing based on travels across the southern residents’ entire range and reporting with the researchers who know them best. Enriched with Steve Ringman’s unmatched photographs.  Elevated with Emily Eng’s elegant scientific illustrations.

Orca: Shared Waters, Shared Home builds on, updates and expands the Hostile Waters special series published by The Seattle Times that won the 2019 prestigious international Gold Award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in the large newspaper category.