When two sympatric, closely related species appear to have very similar needs, we may ask whether mechanisms exist that enable them to avoid direct c… - Carl Safina

... I haven’t wanted to write the same book over and over again, so I’ve gone back to what was really my earliest interest, which is what other animals do and why do they do it.
My upcoming book, “Alfie and Me,” is also much more about the human relationship with the rest of life on Earth, why it’s the way it is for us now, and how it was in other cultures, in other times. And it’s really about what kind of relationship with the world we can have when we blur the usual boundary between us and other species. The narrative story is wrapped around a little baby that was near death that somebody found on their lawn and was brought to us, and whom we raised. She decided to stay around our property and to get a wild mate, and to raise young in a that I put up on the outside wall of my studio.

The bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) is a creature of superlatives. Growing to 1500 pounds (700 kilos), traveling on transoceanic migrations, and reputedly capable of swimming 50 miles (90 km) per hour, it is one of the largest, most wide-ranging, and fastest of animals. To anyone who has seen this saber-finned giant explode through the surface of the sea, it is among the most magnificent.

A couple of years ago I was participating as a writing coach in a "sea-mester," sailing 1,000 miles from Hawaii to , while students from Stanford University received lectures and closely supervised instruction and conducted independent projects on high-tech oceanography. These were smart kids, and the professors were superb. Five hundred miles from land, we got into a discussion on whether the ocean is a "wilderness." The consensus: Obviously it is; there was no sign of humanity, not another boat in sight. Everyone savored the thought: wilderness!
But, I reminded everyone, we haven't caught a single or seen a or a . Wilderness? I don't think so. If the were covered with water, you wouldn't see that the buffalo were gone, either. There is no ocean wilderness. The whole ocean feels our effects, through fishing, pollution, dying s, , immortal plastics, oxygen-asphyxiated s, , and .