Aside from being one of the greatest works of American literature, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick spawned the term “Moby-Dickering”, describing the activity of spending too much time hunting for the meaning in the book’s pursuit of a giant white sperm whale. However, marine biologist Richard J. King has approached the classic very differently in his own book.

King has been rigorous. He studied Melville’s original sources to work out what he probably knew rather than what he wrote, delved into specimen tanks below the Natural History Museum in London, interviewed scientists and took to the seas himself.

Take right whales. How these mammals got their name is clear. “Since it was slow, coastal, and plump with oil, hunters called it the ’right whale’, as it was the best one to chase,” writes King. Today, we know these whales use the baleen plates in their mouths to filter plankton and krill out of the water. But Moby-Dick was published in 1851 and the word “krill” didn’t come into regular usage until the 20th century. In the novel, narrator Ishmael says right whales feed on “brit”. There are clues to suggest he meant krill, but we can’t be sure.

Other details are clearer. Ishmael refers to whales as fish, not mammals, even though he knows they have lungs and warm blood. This is deliberate, says King, because Ishmael “positions the practical hunter’s knowledge of the whalemen above that of the ’ learned naturalists ashore’”.

King updates other aspects too, revealing the surprising intellect of sperm whales, with some learning to dive down to “floss the fish off the long lines” when they hear the sound of commercial boats hauling back the catch.

While King judges Moby-Dick’s scientific accuracy, he also reveals how the book helped raise the profile of sperm whales, opening the door to better protection for them. Yet King also writes that “Melville fed the period fear and contempt for sharks, writing of these fish as a ghastly, fierce and cannibalistic metaphor”. So the novel may also be partly responsible for the widespread, irrational fear of sharks and the deaths of so many of these beautiful predators.

What can be inferred from the last paragraph?