To Sea and Back: The Heroic Life of the Atlantic Salmon

by RichardShelton (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2010

  $17.78

  Combining natural history with beguiling autobiographical and historical narrative, To Sea and Back is a dazzling portrait of a fish whose story is closely intertwined with our own.

  'Indispensable and powerful... To Sea and Back mingles history with biography and science... Shelton writes with a poet's ear... A writer to be prized.'-- Tom Adair, Scotsman

  The Atlantic salmon is an extraordinary and mysterious fish. In To Sea and Back, Richard Shelton combines memoir and deep scientific knowledge to reveal, from the salmon's point of view, both the riverine and marine worlds in which it lives. He explores this iconic fish's journey to reach its feeding grounds in the northern oceans before making the return over thousands of miles to the burns of its birth to reproduce.

  Along the way, Shelton describes the feats of exploration that gave us our first real understanding of the oceans, and shows how this iconic fish is a vital indicator of the health of our rivers and oceans. Above all, To Sea and Back is the story of Richard Shelton's lifelong passion for the sea and his attempt to solve the perennial enigmas of the salmon's secret life.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2009

  $3.25

  The Atlantic salmon is an extraordinary and mysterious fish. For centuries mankind has wondered how it is able to survive both in fresh and salt water and how it navigates thousands of miles to feeding grounds in the northern oceans before returning to the burns of its birth to reproduce.

  Richard Shelton combines personal memoir and science to reveal the riverine and marine worlds from the salmon's point of view. He explores the salmon's life cycle and places the fish in its evolutionary context - one that is much closer to man's than we might imagine. Along the way, he describes the feat of exploration that gave us our first real understanding of the oceans, introduces the great Victorian naturalist Frank Buckland, and shows how this iconic fish is a vital indicator of the health of our rivers and oceans. Above all, To Sea and Back is the story of Richard Shelton's lifelong passion for the sea and his attempt to solve the perennial enigmas of the salmon's secret life.