Author: Christopher Swann
DESCRIPTION
Baja California is a land of extremes, where desert meets sea, light plays on ancient mountains, and life thrives in unexpected places. The whales first called the author here over twenty years ago, but what he discovered was a world so rich it became home. This is a personal account of decades at sea, photographing whales and marine life, and absorbing the beauty of the peninsula and the Sea of Cortés. With lyrical prose and striking images, the author portrays a place where boojum trees and cardón cactus rise like Gaudí sculptures, islands float like mirages, and gray whales find refuge in calm lagoons. But this is also a quiet warning. As time passes, we forget the abundance that once was. The sea, once teeming with life, is changing: fewer whales, smaller fish, quieter skies. This book records what was and reminds us of what could still be, if we choose to remember.
From Picacho del Diablo to the whirlpools of Salsipuedes, this journey captures wild animals in their element: unposed, untamed, real. At its core, it is a story of longing—for beauty, wildness, and truth—and of finding a vivid, unexpected life beneath shooting stars and surfacing whales.
SPECIFICATIONS
English
Hardback
28x32 cm (11x12.6 inches)
372 pages
ISBN 978-88-31403-72-6
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christopher Swann began his love affair with the sea as a diver both in the Royal Navy and then the oilfields of the North Sea. This in turn led to an interest in old square rigged sailing ships and for several years this became his work and passion before he bought his own 80ft ketch the Marguerite Explorer and began to run wildlife holidays. This had barely begun before he discovered whales and his life’s course was set.
He ran whale-watching holidays for almost 35 years, assisted with science projects, helped make films and covered thousands of miles on cetacean surveys. During all this time he felt no need to take a photograph, as he said so often afterwards, ‘looking was all the pleasure I needed’.
Eventually however, and partly because he was given a digital camera by some of his client’s he started to take pictures and in time built up a vast library of cetacean images; these featured in everything from National Geographic to the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year.
His passion for whales has never ceased and although now nearly 70 he still spends months in his small open boat roaming the Sea of Cortes looking for cetaceans and other marine life