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Title details for The Devil's Teeth by Susan Casey - Available

The Devil's Teeth

A True Story of Survival and Obsession Among America's Great White Sharks

by Susan Casey
Kimberly Farr
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
Travel thirty miles north, south, or east of San Francisco city hall and you'll be engulfed in a landscape of thick traffic, fast enterprise, and six-dollar cappuccinos. Venture thirty miles due west, however, and you will find yourself on what is virtually another planet: a spooky cluster of rocky islands called the Farallones. Journalist Susan Casey was in her living room when she first glimpsed this strange place and its resident sharks, their dark fins swirling around a tiny boat in a documentary. These great whites were the alphas among alphas, the narrator said, some of them topping eighteen feet in length, and each fall they congregated here off the northern California coast. That so many of these magnificent and elusive animals lived in the 415 area code, crisscrossing each other under the surface like jets stacked in a holding pattern, seemed stunningly improbably–and irresistible.
Within a matter of months she was in a seventeen-foot Boston Whaler, being hoisted up a cliff face onto the barren surface of Southeast Farallon Island–part of the group known to nineteenth-century sailors as the "Devil's Teeth." There she joined the two biologists who study the sharks, bunking down in the island's one habitable building, a haunted, 120-year-old house spackled with lichen and gull guano. Less than forty-eight hours later she had her first encounter with the famous, terrifying jaws and was instantly hooked. The Devil's Teeth offers a rare glimpse into the lives of nature's most mysterious predators, and of those who follow them. Here is a vivid dispatch from an otherworldly outpost, a story of crossing the boundary between society and an untamed place where humans are neither wanted nor needed.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 3, 2005

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781415951019
      • File size: 313670 KB
      • Duration: 10:53:28

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Journalist Susan Casey ventures to the Farrallon Islands, just 30 miles off the coast of San Francisco, yet one of the wildest places in the U.S. The islands are home to a magnificent population of great white sharks, and a couple of brave scientists who study them. Casey managed to get unparalleled access to these researchers and spent several weeks observing the sharks, which she writes about with infectious enthusiasm. While this production is ostensibly about sharks, it's really more of a personal story about Casey herself, and for long stretches it's self-indulgent. Fortunately, this flaw is redeemed somewhat by Kimberly Farr's narration--her comfort with the material makes listeners feel like they're listening to Casey herself. D.B. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine
    • AudioFile Magazine
      Just a few dozen miles off San Francisco lie the Farallon Islands. The rocky outcroppings, known to nineteenth-century sailors as the Devil's Teeth, are part of a marine wildlife sanctuary, which is home to scores of great white sharks for several months a year. Susan Casey's story of the sharks and the scientists who study them is part magazine article, part travelogue, part character study, and part biological essay. Her writing is clear and easy to follow, and she mixes in the science so effectively that listeners won't realize how much they're learning. However, her reading, while serviceable, falls a little short. Her diction is casual at times, consistently dropping the "ed" on past tenses and pronouncing "Farallon" as one syllable. It's a small distraction, though. This production includes a bonus CD with digital images of the sharks. R.C.G. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 23, 2005
      From its startling opening description of scientists racing to the bloody scene where a shark has decapitated a seal, this memoir–cum–natural and cultural history of the Farallon Islands—"the spookiest, wildest place on Earth"—plunges readers into the thrills of shark watching. Casey, a sportswriter with recurring dreams about deep-sea creatures, "became haunted" by the 211-acre archipelago 27 miles west of San Francisco when she saw a BBC documentary about Peter Pyle and Scot Anderson, biologists who study the great white sharks there. The islands are the only place on Earth where scientists can study the animals in their natural habitat. These evolutionary ancients (sharks lived 200 million years before dinosaurs) can be as large as Mack trucks, eat suits of armor, are both fierce and friendly, and, according to Casey, are an addictive fascination for those lucky enough to encounter them. Casey's three-week solo stay on a yacht anchored in shark waters is itself an adventure, with the author evacuating just hours before the yacht disappeared in a storm. Her suspenseful narrative perfectly matches the drama and mystery of these islands, their resident sharks and the scientists who love them. Photos. Agent, Sloan Harris.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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