As Barnett writes, “We walk on a world of shell.” From limestone aquifers, to chalk, to marble, shells made by soft-bodied animals are the foundation for much of life on earth and are a blueprint for our ever-changing planet, their fossils even documenting Mount Everest’s more humble origins in the seas. These soft-bodied creatures have, quite literally, shaped the world as we know it. Biomineralization, the process by which these animals recycle ocean minerals into hard protective structures, evolved in microorganisms more than 500 million years ago, which eventually gave rise to the tens of thousands of known mollusk species today. Shells are the legacies of some of the world’s most inventive and prolific architects: mollusks. Since the dawn of humanity, our history has been inextricably tied to the pearlescent, the ribbed, the spiraling, the speckled, and the iridescent calcium carbonate wonders and the unsung animal artists of the ocean that create, inhabit, and leave them behind. Much as shells have done throughout human history, as journalist Cynthia Barnett writes in her exquisite new book, The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans. It’s a powerful illusion as, merged with your ear, the shell creates an echo chamber of noises that transports us to breaking waves and sea breezes, creating a moment of intimacy and wonder between us and the natural world. Just as we’ve loved seashells for the gorgeous exterior rather than the animals that build them, we’ve loved the oceans as a beautiful backdrop of life rather than the very source.” Photo by Aaron Daye.Īs kids, we learn that if you place a shell against your ear, it becomes an auditory portal to the ocean. “The life inside the shell the Maldivian queens and others left out of history books the connections between the human condition and that of the sea. “This book is about seeing what has gone unseen,” she writes. In her magnificent new book, The Sound of the Sea, journalist Cynthia Barnett explores the epic and often overlooked history of humanity’s relationship with seashells and the marine mollusks who make them.

Cynthia barnett the sound of the sea