The Sea Inside

The Sea Inside (2013) is a memoir and travelogue by English author Philip Hoare. Having recently co-curated the Moby Dick Big Read project, Hoare revisits his love of the ocean and aquatic life by chronicling visits to distant seas where he swims with whales and dolphins. Electric Literature called The Sea Inside "foremost a work of joy."

Early on, Hoare points out the importance of whales, both in a scientific, ecological sense and an aesthetic one. Due to the burgeoning whaling industries of the 19th and early 20th centuries, 99 percent of whale populations were lost by the 1960s. This is a crisis because whales provide a great amount of support to ocean ecosystems. For example, plankton that feeds on whale waste is an important source of food for countless aquatic species. Moreover, whales help circulate ocean waters in a way that is useful for underwater ecosystems. Beyond the immediate environmental importance of whales, Hoare writes of the aesthetic beauty of the songs whales sing. He laments the loss of a natural world dominated by animal sounds, both those made by whales and also the songs of birds. In just the past 40 years, the population of nightingales in Great Britain has diminished by 90 percent.

Hoare relays a series of aquatic adventures. While swimming off the shores of New Zealand, he encounters a super-pod comprising 200 dolphins. At first, he is frightened that the dolphins will plow into him, causing injury or worse. But the dolphins easily swim around him, aware of him and his movement. He is delighted as the dolphins breach, turning somersaults all around him.

On his travels, Hoare also encounters the ghosts of artists and literary figures. While visiting the seaside town of Freshwater on the Isle of Wight, he ponders one of the village's most famous residents, the 19th-century portrait artist Julia Margaret Cameron who is known for painting a portrait of the English naturalist Charles Darwin. Traveling to London, Hoare views the skeletal remains of whales and porpoises along with various specimens of preserved flesh. Here, he is reminded of the groundbreaking but controversial 18th-century Scottish surgeon John Hunter, who against the deceased's family's wishes, pays for the stolen dead body of the giant Charles Byrne in order to dissect it to study gigantism.

In addition to whales and other sea mammals, Hoare explores the cultural and ecological importance of birds in Western society. He ponders the English author T.H. White who though best-known for his retellings of Arthurian legends, also wrote a classic of nature writing The Goshawk, in which he attempts to train a goshawk bird of prey. Hoare also points out how the idea of ravens has evolved in the Western imagination. Though considered a portent of doom in the 19th century and beyond, ravens were an object of deep devotion by early Christians.

On the other side of the world in Tasmania, Hoare reflects on the 19th-century genocide that virtually wiped out that island's aboriginal population. He uses the genocide as a lens through which to view the fate of the extinct Tasmanian tiger or thylacine, the last of which was spotted in 1936. Also, of interest to Hoare is Te Pehi Kupe, a 19th-century Maori war leader and the possible inspiration for the Moby-Dick character, Queequeg.

Upon returning to his suburban home in England where he lives alone, Hoare is ambivalent about his travels. While his heart belongs to the sea, he considers whether there is anything more beautiful than the unexpected sight of a blackbird perched in the garden outside his house. He ends the book with a quote from the Old English poem by an unknown writer, The Seafarer: "Even now my heart / Journeys beyond its confines, and my thoughts / Over the sea, across the whale's domain, / Travel afar the regions of the earth."

The Sea Inside is a deeply felt and beautifully written chronicle of adventure and introspection.