Alexandra Morton Knihy

Alexandra Morton, often referred to as "the Jane Goodall of Canada," offers a compelling account of her thirty-year struggle to protect British Columbia's wild salmon, serving as both an inspiring narrative and a guide to resistance. After moving from California in the early 1980s to follow her passion for the northern resident orca, she settled in Echo Bay, where she embraced a life of scientific discovery and single motherhood amidst natural abundance. However, the arrival of industrial aquaculture in 1989 disrupted this harmony, displacing the whales and threatening the wild salmon that Indigenous communities had relied on for millennia. When her First Nations neighbors sought her help in protesting the damage caused by fish farms, Morton transitioned her research to investigate the diseases and parasites emanating from Atlantic salmon pens, which jeopardized the wild Pacific salmon and the coastal ecosystem. Standing against the farms, she initially represented her community and later became a key figure in a broader uprising, advocating for Indigenous rights and environmental justice. Through her scientific work, protests, and legal challenges, Morton exemplifies perseverance and courage, urging society to heed the wisdom of wild salmon and the Indigenous peoples who have coexisted with them for thousands of years.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Alexandra Morton has been called "the Jane Goodall of Canada" because of her passionate thirty-year fight to save British Columbia's wild salmon. Her account of that fight is both inspiring in its own right and a roadmap of resistance. Alexandra Morton came north from California in the early 1980s, following her first love—the northern resident orca. Then, in 1989, industrial aquaculture moved into the region, chasing the whales away. Soon Alex had shifted her scientific focus to documenting the infectious diseases and parasites that pour from the ocean farm pens of Atlantic salmon into the migration routes of wild Pacific salmon, and then to proving their disastrous impact on wild salmon and the entire ecosystem of the coast. Alex stood against the farms, first representing her community, then alone, and at last as part of an uprising in which ancient Indigenous governance resisted a province and a country that wouldn't obey their own court rulings. She has used her science, many acts of protest and the legal system in her unrelenting efforts to save wild salmon and ultimately the whales—a story that reveals her own perseverance and bravery, but also shines a bright light on the ways other humans doggedly resist the truth. Here, she brilliantly calls those humans to account for the sake of us all.

Sie sind ein Wunder der Natur, ihre Intelligenz herausragend, ihre Gesänge faszinierend und rätselhaft. Wer sind diese Säugetiere, die vor 15 Millionen Jahren ins Meer zurückkehrten? Die amerikanische Biologin Alexandra Morton widmet ihr Leben den Schwertwalen und betreibt vor British Columbia ihre eigene Walforschungsstation. Seit Jahrzehnten beobachtet sie die intelligenten Meeressäugetiere in freier Natur, begleitet sie mit dem Boot, belauscht ihr Familienleben und erforscht ihre Sprache. Ein eindrucksvolles Dokument über das Leben der sanften Meeresriesen. 'Alexandra Morton entführt uns in die magische Welt unter Wasser, wo wir Kreaturen begegnen, die zu den intelligentesten der Erde gehören. Sie ist eine exzellente Wissenschaftlerin, aber am tiefsten beeindruckt hat mich ihre Liebe zu den Walen.' Jane Goodall