HarperOne

Thanks to National Public Radio’s Barbara King for this review:

My Octopus Teacher’s Craig Foster dives into the ocean again in ‘Amphibious Soul’

The film My Octopus Teacher tells the story of a man who goes diving every day into the underwater South African kelp forest and forms a close relationship there with an octopus. That man — the diver, and also the filmmaker — was Craig Foster, who delighted millions of nature lovers around the world and took home the 2021 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Now in a new book, Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World, Foster describes the entire ecosystem of the Great African Seaforest at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, and the transforming role it has played in his quest to seek wildness. As the book’s amphibious title hints, Foster is as much (maybe more) at home in the ocean as he is on land.

Foster’s incredible engagement with seaforest creatures comes through beautifully in this account. Every day for months, he recounts, he “visited the crack in the rock where a huge male clingfish lived,” and the fish became quite calm in his presence. “Returning to the same places, watching for subtle changes, and continuing to ask questions replenishes my curiosity,” he writes.

Foster’s profound tie to place reminds me of birders who closely attend to nature in their own yard or local park. Indeed, Foster underscores that any of us can find wildness where we live: “We can all develop a more playful relationship with nature, whether that means collecting crisp leaves or smooth rocks to use in our artwork or watching the squirrel perform acrobatics outside our window.”…

Read the whole review here.