Space, we're told, is the final frontier. Yet we have a space of our own, right here on Earth – enormous, barely fathomable, and almost entirely untouched by humans. The deep ocean. Barely 5% of it is mapped, but The Deep gloriously illustrates the progress made so far. Below 1800 meters, the ocean is a different world. Light cannot penetrate this far down, but life is abundant. Vampire squids, tuber worms, viper fish, the ocean floor ecospheres cultivated by giant hydrothermal vents, the wonder of bioluminescent jellyfish, and the improbable siphonophores – a colony of tiny creatures that act as a single organism. In the last 25 years, a new species has been discovered in those inky depths every two weeks. What else is out there? It's all just waiting to be brought to light.
– Nick Parton
The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss
Claire Nouvian
University of Chicago Press
2007, 256 pages, 9 x 12 x 1.1 inches
$42 Buy a copy on Amazon
