TRAWLER

Having survived Borneo, Amazonia, and the Congo, Redmond O'Hanlon now ventures into his own perfect storm in the wildest waters he could find. His rendezvous with destiny begins aboard a trawler converted for deep-sea fishing at a cost of $3 million-which is why its young skipper's setting out from Scotland's northern tip when the rest of the fleet is running for safe harbor. Equipped with a fancy Nikon, an excessive supply of socks and no seamanship whatsoever, O'Hanlon joins a crew of five who stock a bottomless hull with the catch, day after sleepless day, even as the hurricane threatens to wash them overboard. While he helps inventory the creatures of the deepest North Atlantic-from jellycats to the wormlike hagfish, unchanged since its evolution more than 500 million years ago-his shipmates exchange manic monologues that range from their woeful longing for loyal women to trade laws and complex fishing quotas. Rich in oceanography, marine biology and men's lives, "Trawler reveals once again the inimitable spirit of the man Bill Bryson has called "probably the finest writer of travel books in the English language, and certainly the most daring." "From the Hardcover edition.