Author studied herring by day, wrote about whales by night

When Eric Jay Dolin interviewed for a job in Gloucester in 2002, he was asked the standard question about where he saw himself in five years.

"I hope to be a full-time writer and not working at the National Marine Fisheries," he said he replied. The federal agency hired him anyway.

Dolin, 45, was actually a little ahead of schedule when he left his job as a fisheries policy analyst this summer as his history of the American whaling industry hit the bookstores. Since July, he's crisscrossed New England and New York on a book tour that has taken him to many old whaling ports. Yesterday, he gave a presentation on his book at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City

Tomorrow, the author of "Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America" returns to Gloucester for a reading and signing at The Bookstore.

Before taking the Marine Fisheries job in Gloucester, Dolin worked on global climate change issues for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the Washington, D.C., area, then moved to Marblehead, where his wife was raised and where they wanted to raise their family.

In Gloucester, he worked on regulations for managing spiny dogfish and Atlantic herring.

The son of a physicist, Dolin grew up in Connecticut in a home where academic pursuit was encouraged.

"I've always loved the ocean. When I was young, I collected seashells," said Dolin, who as a boy dreamed of a career like Jacques Cousteau's. "At one point, I had more than 1,000 seashells that were all catalogued."

As a high school student, he wrote a 150-page paper on "The Mollusks of Long Island Sound." He continued to write, publishing articles and op-ed pieces throughout college and graduate school. He holds degrees from Brown University, Yale University's School of Forestry and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"Leviathan" is his ninth book, but the first published with a literary agent.

While carrying out his fisheries research for his day job here, Dolin devoted his free time to his writing.

He approached his research on whaling as methodically as he did collecting seashells as a boy.

He created a whaling library in his basement office, spending about $3,000 to purchase 120 books from used-book dealers and others on the Internet, some dating to the 1800s. He compiled 30 binders of articles and organized all this information on shelves surrounding his desk.

"Every day I was learning something new about American history or whaling," said Dolin.

"Leviathan" has been well reviewed by critics from the Wall Street Journal to Entertainment Weekly. The New York Times Book Review called it "an exhaustive, richly detailed history of industrial American whaling. . . . Dolin succeeds admirably at what he sets out to do: tell the story of one of the strangest industries in American history."

The New Bedford Whaling Museum recently awarded Dolin the 23rd L. Byrne Waterman Award for outstanding contributions to research and pedagogy in the Arts, Humanities, and Sciences.

The impact of whaling, which goes far beyond Melville and "Moby Dick," breaks the surface in Dolin's book, which combines American history, business and nature.

"American whale oil lit the world. It was used in the production of soap, textiles, leathers, paints and varnishes, and it lubricated the tools and machines that drove the Industrial Revolution," wrote Dolin in the introduction.

Other whale products fueled the fashion industry. Baleen - the bony but elastic material in the mouths of many whale species that strains the plankton that they feed on - was used to make women's corsets. Ambergris, a waxy substance formed in the intestines of sperm whales, was an important ingredient in perfume.

The author intended to create a narrative of American history that used whaling as its backbone, illustrating how an ambitious colony grew to become a global leader.

"It's about understanding the linkage between whaling and what happened in our country," Dolin said. "Whaling played a role in our pre-founding, our founding, our Native American-colonial relations, the Revolution, the War of 1812 and the Civil War."

The book, which contains 90 illustrations, covers three centuries, beginning with John Smith, who first came to the colonies in search of whales in 1614. In the 1800s, whaling would become the young nation's fifth-largest industry.

The book breathes life into the accounts filled with adventure, danger, and profit for those who dared to row in small boats alongside 50-ton whales to spear them, often in wild seas.

The discovery of petroleum in 1859 led to the decline of the industry as whale oil was replaced by the cheaper kerosene. The industry lumbered on until the mid-1920s in the United States.

"It was the end of the great era of Yankee whaling and the last of the wooden whale ships," Dolin said.

Russell Galen, Dolin's literary agent, said Dolin's unique background helped him tell the story about how the whaling industry sparked the nation's manifest destiny.

"He found a mother lode; natural history and American history are so rarely intertwined," Galen said. "But this book is about nature and money coming together. You get to read about animals, ecology and human nature, and their relationship to each other. It's not just about whales."

If you go

* What: Author Eric Jay Dolin gives a reading of his new book, "Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America"

* When: Tomorrow at 7 p.m.

* Where: The Bookstore of Gloucester at 61 Main St.

* More information: 978-281-1548.

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