Berwald reports: I stumbled onto jellyfish, not on a beach like you might expect, but writing captions for a National Geographic story about acid seas. Gracefully blending personal memoir with crystal-clear distillations of science, Spineless is the story of how Juli learned to navigate and ultimately embrace. Berwald details how focusing on jellyfish expanded her own intellectual horizons and she tells some awfully good stories along the way. ISBN-10: 0735211264, ISBN-13: 978-0735211261. Yet Berwald makes clear that the oceans are incredibly complex ecosystems and scientists aren’t fully certain what role jellyfish play, only that they are a critical component of the environment. Her message transcends jellyfish themselves: Berwald makes clear that researching jellyfish “is not just to look at a creature unfamiliar and bizarre to most, but to study the planet and our place in it.” As oceans acidify and fisheries crash from overuse, jellyfish populations appear to be expanding: clogging cooling systems of power plants, disrupting tourism, and further damaging fish stock. Berwald interviews leading jellyfish scientists around the world while sharing some of her own experiences with the animals, including searching for blooms in the eastern Mediterranean and tasting some at home in Austin, Tex.

Listen online or offline with Android, iOS, web, Chromecast, and Google Assistant. Get instant access to all your favorite books. She reveals the ways these seemingly simple creatures are far more complex than many people imagine, examining how they communicate, how some sense light without eyes, and how some are virtually immortal. Spineless: The Science of Jellyfish and the Art of Growing a Backbone audiobook written by Juli Berwald. Combining humor and passion, science textbook writer Berwald investigates the strange world of the jellyfish in this captivating and informative science memoir.

Spineless by Juli Berwald