SEA JOURNAL

Whether paddling through the shallows or crouching on a cliff in a hailstorm, Lisa takes us on a journey of compelling diversions. Against a backdrop of the shifting seasons, weather and tides, we follow the trails of washed-up cuttlebones, by-the-wind sailors and mermaid’s purses. We meet wind-sellers, selkies and 19th century fossil hunters, and a cast of wondrous creatures, both modern and extinct.

Amongst luminous photographs of seaweed and jellyfish, and gulls wheeling through spume, are stories of barnacle geese growing on trees, the evolution of whales and Lego dragons lost at sea. Drawings of plankton and shells fill the margins, as we see how a handful of sand or the whorl of a fossil nautilus can hold hundreds of millions of years of Earth’s history.

As the threads draw together there is the sense that a walk on the beach, with all its chance finds and everyday wonders, stretches both back into the deep past and ahead into the uncertain future of our oceans. Above all, we are inspired to go out and explore for ourselves, reminded of the pleasures of discovery, and of looking and listening more closely.