In the spirit of Rachel Carson and John Berger, Fathoms is a work of profound insight and wonder. We travel to Japan to board whaling ships, examine the uncanny charisma of these magnificent mammals and confront the plastic pollution now pervading their underwater environment. She takes us into the deeps to discover that one whale’s death can spark a great flourishing of creatures.

In lively, inventive prose, she introduces us to whales so rare they have never been named she tells us of the astonishing variety found in whale sounds and of whale ‘pop’ songs that sweep across hemispheres.

In Fathoms, Giggs blends natural history, philosophy and science to explore these questions with clarity and hope. How do whales experience environmental change? Has our connection to these fabled animals been transformed by technology? What future awaits us, and them? And what does it mean to write about nature in the midst of an ecological crisis? When Rebecca Giggs encountered a humpback whale stranded on her local beach in Australia, she began to wonder how the lives of whales might shed light on the condition of our seas. Our fear is that the unseen spirits that move in them are ours. Recently the book was distinguished by being 'Highly Commended' in the shortlist for the 2021 Wainwright Prize for Writing on Global Conservation.There is a kind of hauntedness in wild animals today: a spectre related to environmental change. It was also shortlisted for the 2021 Stella Prize - Australia's most renown award for writing by women and non-binary authors in any genre. In Australia, Fathoms won the 2020 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Prize for Literature, the Royal Zoological Society's Whitley Award for Popular Zoology, and the WA Premier's Prize for an Emerging Writer. The book also listed as a finalist in the Kirkus Prize and the PEN/E.O. In the US Fathoms was awarded the prestigious 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. Her debut nonfiction book, Fathoms: The World in the Whale, came out in 2020 with Simon & Schuster (US), and Scribe (Aus/UK). Her topics span jellyfish swarms, how sea-turtles fare in heatwaves, the history of leeches as weather prediction devices, and whether cows have friends. Rebecca writes about how people feel toward animals in a time of ecological crisis and technological change. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, Best Australian Essays, Best Australian Science Writing, and other publications.

Rebecca Giggs is an award-winning writer from Perth, Australia.

Fathoms by Rebecca Giggs