This time, writing the proposal, finding the right editor and publisher in Matt Weiland at W.W. The narrative winds out to other countries to underscore our connections to human livelihoods and marine life worldwide.įor my previous books, crafting and pitching the proposals were the arduous parts, especially the months of steady rejection before each sold. I structured the chapters roughly in the shape of a spiral shell, winding out from an axis in Sanibel and the wonderful American seashell story that hadn’t been told, including the “Cities of Shell” built by the indigenous Calusa before European settlement. Mollusks now bear the marks of ocean acidification-but also, in some cases, an extraordinary ability to adapt. Seashells on mountaintops told stories of shifting continents and rising and falling seas. Shells of unfamiliar species like ammonites provided evidence of evolution and extinction when those concepts seemed far-fetched.

People have always “listened” to seashells. Seashells seemed like a good metaphor for the unseen, and for helping people understand what’s happening to the sea and its life.

Most respondents, many of them tourists and children visiting Florida, had no idea that a shell is made by a living animal. I started researching mollusks after the director of a seashell museum on Sanibel Island told me about a survey she’d conducted to learn how much visitors already knew about shells. I had published three books on freshwater, most recently Rain: A Natural and Cultural History, and liked the idea of completing the hydrologic cycle with a project on oceans. The Sound of the Sea blends history and science to tell the story of seashells and the animals that build them, the marine mollusks.

The Sound of the Sea by Cynthia Barnett