Award-Winning Marine Biology

Nature Writing & Wildlife

Telling Our Way to the Sea : A Voyage of Discovery in the Sea of Cortez

by Aaron Hirsh

Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature • A Finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing • A Seattle Times Best Book of the Year When biologists Aaron Hirsh and Veronica Volny lead twelve college students to a remote fishing village on the Sea of Cortez, they encounter a bay of dazzling beauty and richness. But as the group begins its investigations—conducting ecological and evolutionary studies of the area and its natural inhabitants, listening to the stories of local villagers, and examining the journals of conquistadors and explorers—they realize that the sea is but a ghost of what it once was. And yet there is redemption in their difficult realization: as they find their places in a profoundly altered environment, they also recognize their roles in the path ahead, and ultimately come to see themselves in a new light. By turns epic and intimate, Telling Our Way to the Sea is a profound meditation on our changing relationships with nature—and with one another.

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