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

Science writer Morris debuts with a captivating account of traveling North America to investigate contentious debates over what to do with booming seal populations, which have rebounded in recent decades thanks to the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act. On the coast of Maine, Morris finds a simmering hostility to the mammals after a 2020 great white shark attack left a 63-year-old woman dead, leading locals to blame seals’ return for attracting sharks that scare off vacationers from tourism-dependent beach towns. Finding fishermen to be similarly resentful, Morris recounts tagging along with Puyallup Tribal Councilman James Rideout on a crabbing expedition near Tacoma, Wash., and discusses how he blamed seal hunting bans for depleting stores of salmon, a “critical part” of Puyallup culture and identity. Morris gives equal space to the more sympathetic stance of biologists and conservationists, describing their research showing that overfishing, climate change, and pollution are the actual drivers of dwindling salmon and cod populations. Morris’s evenhanded perspective eschews easy answers, finding instead a knotty parable about humanity’s struggle to live within a natural world that people profoundly shape without ever achieving the absolute control they desire. Philosophical and impressively reported, this enthralls. Agent: Michelle Tessler, Tessler Literary. (July)