How do writers convince those who are disinterested in climate change that our planet is in dire need of saving? Firstly, they must help readers to fall in love with nature. “Once we’ve made that connection we are committed,” says Fiona Gell in her new book Spring Tides. Flowing between oceanic memoir and marine conservation on the Isle of Man, she lures readers with evocative descriptions of nature and personal histories of a life by the sea. It will appeal to the inner naturalist and to the child within who scours rock pools, seeks treasure troves of drifting shells, and marvels at a Maiden’s Purse.
All this is imparted with an ecologist’s exactness and a mother’s worry about what the future brings. And if anyone is suited to build an ark to protect our futures, it is Fiona Gell, with a PhD in seagrass ecology and a masters in climate change, a seafaring family, and an inheritance of salty determination. She was instrumental in founding the Ramsay Bay Marine Nature Reserve, in affecting policy change, and segueing local fishing rights with sustainability.
Gell’s writing is as enticing as it is informative, providing plenty of satisfying detail about marine life around the Isle of Man: “I have dived on our temperate horse mussel reefs, where the queen scallops are encrusted in golden sponges and the crimson squat lobsters wave.”
She highlights the climate benefits of restoring seagrasses which sequester carbon 16 times faster than tropical forests. She warns that sea-bed dredging, a form of fishing, decimates more than 7 per cent of seagrasses annually. Solutions are offered, along with positive messages that change can happen.
Poor-quality photographs are a minor downside to this luscious memoir in which readers learn how nature reserves are essential in the wider context of climate change. We yearn for that mutual exchange which occurs when we nurture nature as we wonder at horse mussel reefs, quahogs, and cephalopods, and we fall in love with the sea.
Lynn Buckle, award-winning deaf author of What Willow Says, teaches climate writing at The Irish Writers Centre and at the UK National Centre for Writing
