A Year with the Seals

With their large, strangely human eyes or their dog-like playfulness, seals have long captured people's interest and affection. Alix Morris spends a year with these magnetic creatures and brings them to life, season by season, as she learns about their intelligence, their relationships with each other, their ecosystems, and the changing climate.

Along with the seals themselves, Morris explores the competing interests in the debate about 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. This is a rare look at what happens when conservation efforts actually work, and how human tampering with ecosystems continues to have unexpected consequences.