No Island Too Far: Searching for Seabirds on Remote Specks of Land, by Michael Brooke
Pelagic Publishing, 2025
344 pages, hardcover
Michael Brooke’s No Island Too Far is an intimate dive into the life of a seabird biologist and island addict. Though I might be just a little biased—I live on an island and want nothing more than to live with seabirds—Brooke’s writing style is immersive and addictive. Each island you visit with him becomes real, and you can’t wait to see where he takes you next. Following the table of contents, where the featured far-flung islands are listed and sorted into sections of the author’s life, is a map of the world where you can spatially adjust yourself for what follows in the text. I read the book from cover to cover, but one could certainly pick and choose island groups or oceanic areas and dive in that way. You can also revisit, as I did, the ones with projects you want to know more about or places you know you’ll just never visit; reading Brooke’s account may be the closest you ever get to truly experiencing these magical places and the life they support. I recommend reading the book from beginning to end, an experience that puts you in the mind of the author, traveling with him from island to island and delving into the life he’s led. With Brooke as our guide, we experience the seasickness, loneliness and companionship, comfort and hardship, exhaustion and adventure…and food!
Mal de mer, or seasickness, is an experience I have luckily had only a few times, so I am always impressed by people, like Brooke, who build their lives around work that takes them to sea often despite being susceptible to this affliction! As the book begins, and Brooke leads us through the beginning of his love of islands and seabirds, he mentions seasickness. This subject stays with us for the duration of the text; a few voyages—traveling with Pitcairn islanders for a holiday packed into a longboat and rough days at sea unable to land—stand out as truly horrific! Brooke’s resolve and resilience are unparalleled, although like most of us who find ourselves fascinated by seabirds, there is no physical hardship that is too great for us to go where the birds are.
Many of the islands in this book are ones we could visit ourselves, among them Iceland, the Galápagos, Madeira, Madagascar, and Stewart Island. Others we can only dream of visiting, so Brooke’s snippets of life, seabird and human, on islands like Marion and Henderson are as close as we can get other than the emotionless maps or scientific papers about these places.
Not all visits were focused on seabirds. Iceland focused on some passerines: Would White Wagtails and Meadow Pipits there reject a model cuckoo egg the way they would in Britian? As it turns out, No, they do not! Brooke and his friend and colleague Nick Davies spent a spring in 1987 investigating this pressing question. Brooke still had time for an adventure before it was all over as he cycled the island’s center from north to south. On Ascension Island in 1997, the study species was a land crab studied in connection with the government’s plans for eradicating rats. Would the pellets to eradicate rats impact the land crabs? If so, how? And for how long? Luckily the poison, brodifacoum, did not kill the crabs and remained in their bodies for only a month. And while Ascension was declared cat-free in 2006, which did help bolster the seabird populations, a full rat eradication was deemed too expensive and challenging with the high risk of reintroduction.
Brooke can boast that he has spent more time on Henderson Island than any other living person. In the book he recounts the time spent there in 2003, setting the stage for an attempted eradication of the island’s rats in 2011. He and his coworker needed proof that the Pacific rats on Henderson were eating seabird chicks, resulting in the final push toward a project to get rid of these invasive predators. Henderson is home to four species of Pterodroma petrels, and the most vulnerable is the endemic Henderson Petrel—which nests only on this one island. Another species, Murphy’s Petrel, is the one Brooke went to Henderson to observe, checking and flagging nests before the eggs hatched, then returning regularly to document whether chicks were being preyed on by rats. The two were “successful,” as they witnessed a large, male rat take a chick from its nest and begin eating it. Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon occurrence, and invasive predators like mice, rats, cats, pigs, and dogs, not to mention humans, are one of the major hurdles in seabird conservation. This eradication attempt, with aerial bait drops on Henderson, was not successful; however, as Brooke mentions, it came within a whisker. One in 1,000 of the rats survived, and in time, the population rebounded to its previous numbers, truly highlighting the challenges in rendering islands predator-free.
“In Pursuit of Petrels” is a section of the book near and dear to my heart, as I am admittedly addicted to the enigmatic species in the genus Pterodroma, the gadfly petrels. Brooke writes that his love affair with these birds began in 1974 on Réunion Island with Barau’s Petrels, and his searches led him to some of the most exquisite locations on earth. No island too far—especially not when it comes to these petrels! Ten of the world’s 38 species are covered at their island homes in this book; most of us encounter them only at sea, and it’s a dream of many a seabirder to spend time on islands with gadfly petrels!
No Island Too Far is not only about birds. Brooke takes us into his life in a very personal and exposed way that research publications just can’t do. He reminds us that the life of a seabird biologist is neither the most glamorous nor the easiest. He survived, flourished even, in rugged, exposed conditions with limited supplies when in the field on some of the most remote specks of land. Sometimes Brooke was alone and sometimes with others who weren’t the best fit. He missed out on some things most of take for granted, like the near death of his father while stationed on Marion Island for six months, and the loss of his grandmother also while afar. He writes about how finding a suitable mate is a challenge when you have work with such long absences and how lonely this can sometimes feel.
Food is featured prominently in the book, as it features prominently in our lives, and, for Brooke, each island shared some of its life and culture through meals. From capturing and cooking crayfish over a fire on Henderson to salvaging an undigested flying fish from a booby’s regurgitation for dinner to elaborate meals prepared by islanders to the fascinating adoption of foods on some islands brought by those who settled there, Brooke includes many anecdotes among his writing about seabirds.
This book is a must-read for anyone interested in seabirds, islands, travel, field work, or living a full life. Brooke covers it all, and his writing will quickly engage you. He is adept at sharing the facets of his research and discoveries alongside descriptions of daily life in a way that no one else I have read could! Upon finishing this book, I felt like I had chatted with a friend who recounted his adventures all over the world. I understood even more about seabirds than when I began, and I have spent my entire adult life chasing seabirds. This made me want to see more of the islands these birds use to reproduce because I still think of the sea as their home. For most of us, seeing them at sea is as close as we will ever get to the images Brooke sketches in our mind of nights in colonies on these remote specks of land.
Based in Hatteras, North Carolina, since 2001, marine biologist Kate Sutherland is a guide for Seabirding, a company that runs pelagic trips in the Gulf Stream in search of Black-capped Petrels and other sought-after species. Kate also guides for Heritage Expeditions. She spends as much time as possible on boats or ships searching for seabirds!
