The voyage of the Sanderling /

There may well be demand for this book along the Atlantic seacoast and in areas where ecological jeremiads are popular. Based on a two-year sailing expedition from Maine to Rio, Stone's account draws attention to the plight of endangered coastal ecologies. It also brings together fascinating old travel documents and recent interviews with ecological activists. Its fault is in its shallow socioeconomic analysis: the kind of development that appeals to the working class--Dunkin Donuts and Pizza Huts--is automatically bad, while expensive, secluded vacation homes for New York intellectuals are good. Industry is especially bad, with the poor taste of workers somehow suspect. One wonders if Stone believes factory hands determine by majority rule that they'll pollute the seacoast. This point of view won't make friends except among the converted, but there are enough of those to justify adding the book to natural history collections on the East Coast. --Pat Monaghan

It was an ambitious project--a coastal voyage from Maine to Florida, on to the eastern islands of the Caribbean, to the northern coast of Brazil and thence to Rio de Janiero. The object was to assess the current environmental crisis along the Atlantic seaboard. Stone, author of Dreams of Amazonia and vice-president of the World Wildlife Fund, and crew set out in the 38-foot cutter Sanderling , a gift to the Fund. Here he presents grim evidence of coastal pollution observed throughout the voyage, reports on efforts at improvement and points out the few bright spots. On the Caribbean leg of the voyage, Sanderling anchored on Cuba's north shore and touched remote islands where Columbus reputedly made landfall. While the text leans more toward environmental issues than to sailing, sailing buffs will delight in Stone's log of the 16-day, arduous passage from Barbados to Brazil's northern coast. Illustrated. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Here, the author of Dreams of Amazonia (1984) consolidates his expertise as former chief of Rio de Janeiro's Time-Life Bureau, current vice president of the World Wildlife Fund, and amateur yachtsman to produce a rather scattered ecological survey of the Atlantic coasts of North and South America. Stone's ambitious plan to compile a portrait of the Americas' ecologically beleaguered eastern coastline from the seaward side came to fruition in 1986--when he climbed aboard a donated 38-foot cutter and rechristened it ""Sanderling,"" after the light-tooted sandpiper endemic to those beaches. The sanderling proves an all-too-appropriate image as Stone skitters from port to port, identifying which pollutants are dumped into the harbors, rivers, and bays but without satisfyingly analyzing or interpreting this data. His journey--which begins in tourist-threatened Castine, Maine, continues down the Eastern Seaboard to ecologically disastrous Florida, detours to the overdeveloped Caribbean Islands, and winds up in Rio's sewer-like Guanabara Bay--is largely overshadowed by his obsession with the Sanderling's erratic engine, and results in little more than a mild-mannered statement of the obvious: our natural coastline is being steadily destroyed up and down the Atlantic. While in parts of the US and the Caribbean, dedicated local citizens' groups, government intervention, and nature's own ability to bounce back are beginning to slow the pace of destruction, Brazil's economic woes--plus its lack of sufficient national-level organization to handle diffuse problems such as acid rain--offer little hope that that country's wetlands will ever be returned to their original state. One would have wished for more insightful reportage from such a qualified source. As it is, this coastal saga may prove more useful to leisure-time sailors than to serious students of ecology. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.