A YEAR WITH THE SEALS

A tantalising glimpse of nature s capacity to heal The Times Splendid warm and exhaustively researched Sy Montgomery author of The Soul of an Octopus Full of heart zest and honesty Chantal Lyons author of Groundbreakers 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