A Year with the Seals, Alix Morris
A Year with the Seals, Alix Morris
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

A Year with the Seals
Unlocking the Secrets of the Sea's Most Charismatic and Controversial Creatures

Author: Alix Morris, Sy Montgomery

Narrator: Anna Crowe

Unabridged: 8 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/15/2025


Synopsis

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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Shannan on July 15, 2025

Who doesn’t love seals? Who couldn’t love those big, expressive, liquid eyes and cute little round bodies so very obviously not ideal for travel by land, but beautifully made to cut through water with impressive speed and agility? Well, it turns out there are plenty of people on both coasts of the U......more

Goodreads review by Briann on July 10, 2025

Alix Morris provides a nuanced view on seals. Some of you may be wondering, “What do you mean a nuanced view on seals? Who has a problem with them? They’re cute!” Before I read this book, I thought similar things. I had no greater understanding that there were debates and controversies relating to s......more

Goodreads review by Cathy on June 17, 2025

Although non-fiction is not my normal read, I was immediately enthralled by Morris’ insightful and engaging stories of these charismatic creatures: the seals. The book starts with the telling of Hoover, a “wide-eyed pup no bigger than a watermelon” and I was hooked! Morris sheds light on the behavio......more

Goodreads review by Marissa on August 01, 2025

This book really hit that same emotional chord I feel when watching documentaries like Planet Earth when I root for the gazelle to escape the lionness, but then cry when I see the lionness can't feed her cubs without it. A Year with the Seals captures that exact tension. Alix Morris brings you so cl......more

Goodreads review by Elizabeth on June 17, 2025

Big thanks to Alonquin for the ARC! I really enjoyed this book, I think the author does a very good job of maintain balance while talking about the debates around seals, while also just giving good seal content. I also definitely appreciate that Morris loves the seals, and cares deeply about the topi......more