Reading
and Viewing
The whales first, then the island: its history, its indigenous Kalinago story, and the novel that put the sperm whale into the language.
Part natural history, part obsession. The best single book for arriving in Dominica already understanding what a sperm whale is.
The species in full: the anatomy, the fifteen-hundred-metre dives, the whaling history and the science that followed it.
How whales became whales, told by a palaeontologist who digs them out of deserts. Short, fast and genuinely funny.
The sperm whale as the nineteenth century saw it, written by a man who had been on the ships.
The 1791 account. The island as it was described when the plantations were still being cut out of the forest. The original is free to read in full.
The standard history of the island, by the Dominican historian who also wrote Resistance, Refuge, Revival. The one to read for the whole arc, from the Kalinago to independence, rather than a single century.
Dominica is the last place in the eastern Caribbean where the Kalinago hold their own territory. This is that story.
Written by someone who has lived on the island since 2005. Worth having for the volcanoes, the Waitukubuli trail and the villages, if you want the context around what you will actually see.
One free diver, years in the water with sperm whales, and the question of whether they are trying to communicate back. The encounter at its centre happens in Dominica.
The first episode is set in Dominica. A good primer on what a day looking for large whales actually involves, before you spend four of them doing it.
Filmed where you are going, on Dominica creating the world's first reserve for sperm whales in the water you will be diving.
