The Lost Seal

The Lost Seal

Diane McKnight

Illustrated by Dorothy Emerling

ISBN 0-9723422-7-3

$19.95

9 1/4 X 10 1/2", hardcover with dustjacket, 40 pages, four-color throughout, teacher's guide available.

Research scientists camped at the desolate McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica studying the local lakes and streams are one day surprised to find a young Weddell seal in their midst. Tired and hungry, and perhaps lured by the smell of the group’s cheeseburger dinner, the young male is a long way from his natural habitat on the sea ice of McMurdo Sound. Bound by the Antarctic Conservation Act, the scientists know they cannot provide it with sustenance, but instead contact seal scientists who, after some thought, decide they can provide assistance so the seal can return to the sea ice. The seal gets the ride of its life back to its natural habitat, and the scientists name one of their newly found streams to commemorate their unlikely campmate. Published in cooperation with the Long-Term Ecological Research Network, which is funded by the National Science Foundation.

Diane McKnight is a limnologist with the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), at the University of Colorado. She conducts research in the Rocky Mountains and in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica as part of the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) network. She lives in Boulder, CO.

Dorothy Emerling has illustrated all of the of books in the Wild Wonders Series (Roberts Rinehart Publishers) children’s nature books series, as well as other natural science instructional materials. She is the illustrator of My Water Comes From the Mountains, the first book in the LTER Schoolyard Series. She lives in Nederland, CO.