The Northwest Passage - Soper, Tony

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Résumé :
For five centuries Europeans sought a short cut across the top of the world. The quest for a passage to the riches of the Orient claimed many ships and many lives as explorers searched for a route through a labyrinth of islands and ice-strewn waterways. It was 1906 before the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen first completed a transit from Atlantic to Pacific. The Northwest Passage is an ice-choked waterway with spectacular landscapes and a powerful history of naval endeavour. Over the last decade global warming has opened this fabled passage in late summer for possible commercial shipping and the continuing opportunity for adventurous travel. This is the first book to draw together the rich history with a guide to the region&ndash...

Biographie:
Tony Soper is a naturalist with an infectious enthusiasm for seagoing birds, seals and whales. After a first career as a wildlife film maker for the BBC's Natural History Unit he now travels the world in search of wilderness islands and their wildlife.

Long regarded in Britain as 'Mr Birdwatch', his fourteen books include monographs on Owls and Penguins; his back-garden Bird Table Book is an international best-seller and his field guides to the Arctic and the Antarctic are in every polar travellers baggage.

He has presented many television films for BBC and National Geographic. But in a parallel career he was one of the pioneers of expedition cruising, with over forty years of experience running small vessels on birding cruises as well as lecturing on everything from seaside tripper-boats to the largest and grandest cruise ships. He is an enthusiastic diver and small-boat sailor.

He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Plymouth and is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. His wife Hilary is a geographer and painter; they have two sons, one a seagoing expedition leader, the other a BBC producer

Sommaire:
home for the majority of the world's seabirds, enormous numbers of seals, plenty of polar bears and whales and more than enough mosquitoes. It is also home for Inuit communities which adapted superbly to a cruel climate. Today's travellers will meet them and see incomparable scenery and a wealth of wildlife, to say nothing of the chance to have a voice in the long-term management of this wilderness region. An absorbing read and a practical resource....