Iida Turpeinen’s first novel goes deeply into 18th Century scientific practices, treating historical people and events vividly, bringing her readers to a shipwreck in the Aleutian islands, a murderous winter in Siberia, and finishing off at the Baltic Sea coast near 1950s Helsinki. She recounts the tragically wrong-headed beliefs about wildlife husbandry prevalent during the 1700s, the too-late discovery that extinction is a real thing, and concludes with a latter-day example of a heroic quartet of brothers who save a Finnish island near Helsinki from overhunting. Her account contains reliable information on official policy, and is vivid and effective while rendering her characters’ flaws, beliefs, and motivations. It’s a very affecting piece.
Her cast includes renowned naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller, documenter of at least nine different species, eight of which bear his name (Steller’s Jay, Steller’s Sea Eagle, Steller’s Sea Lion, to name only a few). Prominent roles are also played by Anna, the put-upon wife of J.H. Furuhjelm, the last governor of the Russian America colony (Alaska); Professor Alexander von Nordmann and his assistant, the illustrator Hilda Olson; and 20th Century Finnish conservator John Grönvall.
This book beats to the pulse of conservation, and its cast of characters all reflect beliefs and attitudes of the time toward wildlife and the natural world. Steller discovers the Sea Cow in 1741, while on an island in the Bering Sea. By 1769, this gentle giant has breathed its last. Twenty-eight years! That’s all it took for the planet’s best hunters to slaughter it out of sight. It was docile, sluggish, and apparently delicious, although only roughly a fifth were taken for consumption. The rest? For furs, perhaps.
As the Eighteenth Century turned to the Nineteenth, prominent scientists like Georges Cuvier and Alexander von Humboldt warned of the disastrous results of untrammeled human exploitation of the natural world. This brought to the public consciousness the actual danger inherent in waste and bloodthirstiness, though perhaps not prominently enough.
In spite of its subject, Beasts of the Sea has an engaging manner, perhaps even a charm to recommend it. Take it up if your interest runs to cultural and scientific shifts in our approach to the natural world. But also, you will experience a moment in time when naturalists were often celebrities, and when, in the wake of discovering thrilling fossils, the hunt for dinosaurs began in earnest.
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