A Year with the Seals
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- $23.99
Publisher Description
Environmental journalist Alix Morris spends an eye-opening year getting to know these elusive, intelligent creatures, investigating the effects of their extraordinary return from the brink of extinction and how we can try to bring nature back into balance.
It might be their large, strangely human eyes or their dog-like playfulness, but seals have long captured people's interest and affection, making them the perfect candidate for an environmental cause, as well as the subject of decades of study. Alix Morris spends a year with these magnetic creatures and brings them to life on the page, season by season, as she learns about their intelligence, their relationships with each other, their ecosystems, and the changing climate.
Morris also gets to know all of the competing interests in the intense debate about the newly recovered seal populations in our coastal waters, from local fishermen whose catch is often diminished by savvy seals, to tribes who once relied on seal-hunting for food, clothing, and medicine, to seal rescue workers and biologists, to surfers and swimmers now encountering seal-hunting sharks in coastal waters. A Year with the Seals is a rare look at what happens when conservation efforts actually work, and how human tampering with ecosystems continues to have unexpected consequences. But it’s also a gripping adventure story of a journalist determined to understand seals and our relationship with them for herself.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The surprisingly complicated issues surrounding seals are thoughtfully brought forth in this balanced examination from environmental science writer Alix Morris. She spent more than a year on the Maine coast studying the marine mammals and the conflicting feelings they inspire. While most people see seals as adorable and harmless, commercial fishermen resent them for preying on valuable fish stocks and disrupting traps. Meanwhile, beachgoers worry that more seals mean more sharks. One thing made abundantly clear in Morris’ observations is that humans, by and large, are terrible at sharing space and natural resources. If seals interfere with profit or recreation, there’s no shortage of people ready to push them aside. Morris does a tremendous job detailing these tangled relationships, emphasizing that ecological balance is key—while acknowledging our long history of throwing that balance off. And Anna Crowe’s narration deftly matches the author’s enthusiasm for the subject matter. A Year with the Seals challenges perceptions of the animals from all sides, and in doing so, it provides a fuller picture of the species that goes far beyond their cuteness.
