Into the Deep
by Ken Grimwood
Onyx, 1996, ISBN-10: 0451406451, ISBN-13: 978-0451406453
Grimwood's fascination with cetacean intelligence, encounters with dolphins and research into intraspecies dolphin communication gave him the inspiration for Into the Deep (William Morrow, 1995), about a marine biologist struggling to crack the code of dolphin intelligence. It features lengthy imaginative passages written from the point-of-view of several dolphin characters. To research "the willful denial and gratuitous cruelty" involved in tuna fishing, Grimwood secretly infiltrated the crew of a San Diego-based tuna boat.
The publisher described the book: "Set on land and beneath the oceans, Into the Deep reveals, once again, Ken Grimwood's exceptional talent for blending fantasy and reality. One part thriller, one part spiritual adventure, the exhilarating story at the heart of Into the Deep involves a hard-hitting journalist, a beautiful scientist, a globe-traveling engineer, and a venerable Portuguese fisherman. Vastly different, their lives are about to intersect and to become irrevocably changed by a school of dolphins - as the fate of the world hangs in the balance. With the drama that unfolds from a silent war aged at the sea's greatest depths and from a single, fateful discovery, Into the Deep takes a tantalizing glimpse at the optimistic future this planet might achieve if humans and the creatures of the deep could learn to share and defend its remarkable bounty."