Overview

For readers of Jennifer Ackerman and Ed Yong, environmental journalist Alix Morris recounts the year she spent following seals, investigating their fascinating behaviour, the effects of their extraordinary return from near 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. Along with the enigmatic seals themselves, Morris gets to know all of the competing interests in the intense debate about the newly recovered seal populations in our coastal waters, from local fisherman 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. In a world where wildlife populations are disappearing at an alarming rate, 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 for a wide variety of species, humans included.

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9781785127625

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Reviews

Splendid, warm, and exhaustively researched... Morris shares poignant and revelatory stories. Some are tragic. Some are frustrating. Some are funny. Some are sweet. Just listen. All these stories contain truth. -- Sy Montgomery, New York Times-bestselling author of The Soul of an Octopus As soon as Alix Morris introduced me to a talking seal with a Boston accent, I was hooked. A Year with the Seals is full of colorful characters both human and aquatic. Once you start reading this intriguing book, you might have a hard time putting it down. -- Leigh Ann Henion, New York Times-bestselling author of Phenomenal and Night Magic A fascinating deep dive with the seals of North America. In breathtaking detail, Morris shows us what it's like to be a seal, while revealing the beauty and challenges of living among these magnetic creatures. When we look out at the ocean, bottlenose dolphins seem to get all the love. Move over, Flipper. Make way for Hoover, the Talking Seal. -- Joe Roman, author of Eat, Poop, Die A Year with Seals is a must read for anyone who has ever been enthralled by the sight of a seal's winsome face popping out of the water or wondered about our fascination with them. Writing with insight and humor, Morris develops a complex conservation story, revealing the challenges facing all animals adapting to life in the Anthropocene. This beautifully researched book asks not whether or how to control the natural world, but perhaps the most important question of all: how we might learn to control ourselves. -- Leila Philip, New York Times-bestselling author of Beaverland

Author Information

Alix Morris is a science writer in midcoast Maine. Her work has appeared in the Boston Globe Magazine, Smithsonian, Sierra Magazine, MIT Technology Review, Down East Magazine, and elsewhere, and she has graduate degrees in science writing from MIT and global health from Johns Hopkins. Her first book, A Year with the Seals, is supported by a grant from the Sloan Foundation.

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