I also teach science journalism and environmental journalism, and one thing we always talk about to young people is how to take a really small thing to tell a big story. What was it that drew you to taking on such a huge topic? You remind me of the line where you talk about having empathy for these "soft, vulnerable animals." You spent six years in this world. But I think it's important to draw people with laughter, and just remember the joy of life that animals themselves exude. You're trying to write about climate change and bring people into the stories of what's happening to the sea and its life and to the earth. That is a really tough balance to strike. It was infused with a light touch about complicated things. Your book has so much humor, and such a sense of marvel and delight. As always, our interview has been condensed and edited for print. I spoke to Barnett recently about her work, conservation, and why shells make great fact-checkers. With each page, Barnett's meticulous insights soon had me marveling with new appreciation - if not full blown conchylomania (shell collecting madness). I was on Cape Cod, staying at a spot where the beaches and the souvenir shops and the restaurants were awash in shells and shell imagery. I read this wise, often funny book over my own recent vacation. Yet this not a scolding book it's an awestruck travelogue and appreciation of something beautiful. In "The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans," Florida author Cynthia Barnett takes us on a global tour of archeology, anthropology and environmental science, by way of what she describes as "perhaps the most loved objects in nature." It's clear from Barnett's exhaustive research how our deep fondness for shells can and should be our way in to protecting them - and ourselves, by extension - from climate change, from overfishing, from our reckless relationship with our planet. But Cynthia Barnett is actually listening to them. We pick them out of the sand on a sunny summer day, and carry them home like treasures.
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