Whoa! Boggling, bizarre and beautiful, the creatures evolving in the remote depths of the world's oceans really are a trip. This book's crisp close-ups allow astounding detail to pop out from the blackness: gorgeous mugshots of translucent octopi, technicolor jelly fish, and feathery pink iceworms (also seen in the previously-reviewed Ecology of the Deep Sea Vents). I missed the book when it came out last spring; I'm thrilled it didn't pass me by any longer than it did. Seventy years ago, explorer William Beebe put it this way: "Anyone who has actually seen this universe will keep an image of it in his memory forever; for its isolation, its cosmic cold, its eternal obscurity -- and above all, for the indescribable beauty of the denizens of those regions." Amen.

-- Steven Leckart

The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss
Claire Nouvian
2007, 256 pages
$30
Available from Amazon

Sample Excerpts:

Related items previously reviewed in Cool Tools:


Coral Reef Guides

EcoCosm/EcoSphere

Natural Reef Aquariums