Between Eagle and Cod

SEARCHERS AT THE GULF by Franklin Russell. 222 pages. Norton. $5.95.

Franklin Russell, 43, is a tall, sturdy, New Zealand-born nature writer with the kind of rugged looks that excite casting directors for beer commercials. He has been called the most interesting and accomplished writer in his field since Rachel Carson. (He is, in fact, far more accomplished; The Sea Around Us and The Edge of the Sea were basically beads -of fact strung on a thread of prose that often strained for poetic effect.) Unlike Miss Carson, however, Russell is not a sentry on the ecological DEW line. His books, Argen the Gull, Watchers at the Pond,

The Secret Islands, are imaginative attempts, rather, to convey to urban readers nature's strict authority and rude justice. When man enters Russell's work, it is usually as an intruder momentarily stripped of civilization and shivering in the face of unexpected atavisms.

The searchers at Franklin Russell's gulf are all animal--birds, fish and exotic organisms blindly following or seeking loopholes in the natural order. Although the geographic coordinates are fictional, the author acknowledges the gulfs resemblance to Canada's Gulf of St. Lawrence. "Either Gulf," he comments, "may yield whatever a searcher chooses to find in it."

Womb and Grave. The remark is cryptic but not gratuitous. For the success of Searchers is a fine balance between observed fact and unobtrusive metaphor. The insatiable giant cod who cruises through Russell's pages not only passes ichthyological muster, but its instinctive cunning suggests a primitive form of wisdom, or even free will. Far above this predator of the deep, a white eagle inscribes huge parabolas in a futile search for food and a mate. Russell's details are hard and clear, but the irony is left for the reader to dislodge. The eagle--a cliche for freedom--is incapable of adjusting to an environmental change that has scattered his food supply and chances for procreation.

Set to the rhythm of one year, Russell's gulf is an almost mystical union of womb and grave. Death is "quick, bright, forgettable." Life multiplies with an almost ludicrous optimism. Clouds of plankton feed small fish who in turn are eaten by flounder, mackerel and cod. Big fish chase small fish to the surface, where they are either gobbled from below or grabbed from above by shrieking birds. Shreds of flesh drift to the sea floor to nourish crustaceans.

Though he was once a world traveler, Russell now lives on an old farm in New Jersey's Delaware River Valley with his wife, two boys, a couple of aging Siamese cats, and a pet starling named Bronstein, which, Russell claims, imitates creaking doors, balky auto engines and knows how to say, "It's time to go to the supermarket." There Russell studies and writes about nature, trying to draw from its complexity an eternal truth: that no action in life functions without regard to other life.

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