The Deep – The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss - Hardcover

Nouvian, Claire

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226595668 ISBN 13: 9780226595665

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2007

Synopsis

On dry land, most organisms are confined to the surface, or at most to altitudes of a hundred meters - the height of the tallest trees. In the oceans, though, living space has both vertical and horizontal dimensions: with an average depth of 3,800 meters, the oceans offer 99 percent of the space on Earth where life can develop. And the deep sea, which has been immersed in total darkness since the dawn of time, occupies 85 percent of ocean space, forming the planet's largest habitat. Yet, these depths abound with mystery. The deep sea is mostly uncharted - only about 5 percent of the seafloor has been mapped with any reasonable degree of detail - and we know very little about the creatures that call it home. Current estimates about the number of species yet to be found vary between ten and thirty million. The deep sea no longer has anything to prove; it is without doubt Earth's largest reservoir of life. Combining the latest scientific discoveries with astonishing color imagery, "The Deep" takes readers on a voyage into the darkest realms of the ocean. Revealing nature's oddest and most mesmerizing creatures in crystalline detail, "The Deep" features more than two hundred color photographs of terrifying sea monsters, living fossils, and ethereal bioluminescent creatures, some photographed here for the very first time. Accompanying these breathtaking photographs are contributions from some of the world's most respected researchers that examine the biology of deep-sea organisms, the ecology of deep-sea habitats, and the history of deep-sea exploration. An unforgettable visual and scientific tour of the teeming abyss, "The Deep" celebrates the incredible diversity of life on Earth and will captivate anyone intrigued by the unseen - and unimaginable - creatures of the deep sea.

About this title

Review

"In the first century A.D., Pliny the Elder in a bout of oceanic hubris pronounced that there were precisely 176 species of marine fauna and that, 'by Hercules, in the ocean . . . nothing exists which is unknown for us.' Would that we could summon Pliny from his celestial Hall of Shame and thwack him over the head with Claire Nouvian's "The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss." For this book contains 220 color plates of life-forms whose existence was unknown not merely to Pliny but to anyone at all until the modern development of submersibles capable of plunging to depths that are the inverse of a Mount Everest. Only 5% of the seafloor has been mapped, and scientists estimate that there are between 10 million and 30 million species in the 'vasty deep' yet to be found by man. The ones that we do know and many of those are pictured in this book are gloriously bizarre critters that appear to have been fashioned by Salvador Dali. They bear pulse-quickening names that are as if from some weird children's fable: naked sea butterflies, spookfish, pigbutt worms, cutthroat eels, helmet jellies, glasshead grenadiers and yeti crabs. Hued in pink, red, blue, orange, white and purple, these deep-sea denizens can seem repulsive, with their fangs and hooks and hooded eyes. Many of them, however, are balletic little beauties bioluminescent, geometrical designs that hum with a life beyond our reach, but not, anymore, beyond our imagination. "
--Tunku Varadarajan"Wall Street Journal" (03/10/2007)"

"A luminous voyage to the bottom of the sea. . . .Each of the 200-odd photographs in this book is in color. Bejeweled creatures squid, comb jellies, octopuses, and tube worms leap off the black pages in such a luminescent rainbow that you can't help but realize that the 'blackness' of the depths is a misnomer. In many case, photographs of these organisms appear in this book for the first time anywhere. . . . Such intimate photographs are surely the book's triumph. But an articulate and informative commentary accompanies them."
--Richard Ellis"Discover" (04/01/2007)"

"Outstandingimages of deep-sea life drape the pages of "The Deep." Inevitably these include the fish that can, in the words of deep-sea pioneer William Beebe, 'outdragon' any figment of human imagination. Equally welcome is the showing this book gives to invertebrates. My favourite is the giant isopod "Bathynomus," whose alien face looms out at us. This visual feast is accompanied by equally evocative essays from deep-sea biologists: Cindy Van Dover, director of Duke University's marine lab in North Carolina, narrates a history of deep-sea exploration, for example, while Craig Young, director of the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology, describes the scale of the ocean floor. Words and images combine to convey what we know and how much we don't know about life in our planet's largest habitat."--Jon Copley"New Scientist" (04/27/2007)"

"This superbly designed large-format book of photographs of deep-sea creatures, eloquently edited by a French journalist and film director, with brief and highly readable contributions from sixteen leading scientific explorers of the deep, is eye-poppingly magnificent. So much so that it provokes gasps of amazement and awe at the complexity, beauty and uniqueness of life in the abyss. One frequently finds oneself wondering whether the weird creatures floating in the darkness like visiting space aliens can really exist except in the minds of special-effects artists. . . . Easily in the same visual league as the BBC's series Planet Earth, "The Deep" provides a lot more knowledge than the television series for those who want it, without at any point overwhelming the non-biologist reader. . . ."The Deep" deserves to become a modern classic of natural history."--Andrew Robinson"Literary Review" (05/01/2007)"

The book is composed of giant (frequently larger-than-life-size) photographs of deep-sea creatures: the gelatinous "Pandea rubra," which bears an uncanny resemblance to a police strobe light; the seed-like larvae of the "Spantagoid" heart urchin, whose appendages stretch at near-perfect right angles; glass octopi like living x-rays, frilled sharks, furry lobsters. In all, nearly 200 creatures, some of which have never been photographed before, many of which are unknown species, all of which seem unreal, incomprehensible even. Nouvian divides the organisms roughly in half Life at the Bottom is one cluster, Life in the Water Column another and intersperses the photos with short essays written by marine biologists from around the world. These pieces cover everything from the history of deep-sea exploration to the truth about sea monsters to the science behind bioluminescence ( without any doubt the most widely used mode of communication on the planet ) and, thankfully, are both excellently written and spare. They provide background without ever detracting from the point the creatures themselves. Early on, Nouvian includes a telling quote by deep-sea explorer Robert Ballard (of Titanic-discovery fame): At a time when most think of outer space as the final frontier, we must remember that a great deal of unfinished business remains here on Earth. "The Deep" highlights just how accurate that outlook is.
--Abby Seiff"Popular Science blog" (05/16/2007)"

"Bizarre species from as far down as four and half miles are shown in remarkable detail, their tentacles lashing, eyes bulging, lights flashing. The eerie translucence of many of the gelatinous creatures seems to defy common sense. They seem to be living water. On page after page, it is as if aliens had descended from another world to amaze and delight. A small octopus looks like a child s squeeze toy. A seadevil looks like something out of a bad dream. A Ping-Pong tree sponge rivals artwork that might be seen in an upscale gallery. Interspersed among 220 color photographs are essays by some of the world s top experts on deep-sea life that reflect on what lies beneath."--William Broad"New York Times" (05/22/2007)"

"Each squid, jellyfish, and deepsea worm is posed in all its baroque extravagance against a stark black background, occupying a full or double-page spread. The effect is startling, like a series of underwater mug shots crafted by Faberge. Ms. Nouvian ... has enlisted 15 scientists from such research institutes as the Smithsonian, Woods Hole, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium itself, to contribute brief but lively reports on everything from 'sharks of the dark' to methane seeps and hydrothermal vents. There is a handy depth chart keyed to each image, a glossary, a page of interesting oceanic statistics, and a good bibliography.Good as the texts and aids are, the images carry the book; they are simply spectacular."
--Eric Ormsby"New York Sun" (05/23/2007)"

"'Don't give away that book!' so exclaimed my 12-year-old daughter. . . . Since arriving, "The Deep" has been sitting on my coffee table, thumbed through by kifs and adults alike. I sat down and read it cover to cover."--Ellen Kappel "Oceanography ""

""The Deep" demonstrate that some of the weirdest, most wonderful creatures may well remain undiscovered. For the past 25 years, one new deep-sea species from the neon-colored to the nearly invisible has been found each week. Estimates of those remaining undiscovered range from 10 million to 30 million. By the time all those creatures are cataloged, they may well have beggared the capacity of human language to describe them. "The Deep" already showcases a circus menagerie that includes the ping pong tree sponge, the fangtooth, the red paper lantern medusa, the glowing sucker octopus, the vampire squid for whom the expression "bat out of hell" would seem to have been invented and the pigbutt worm ("a pair of flying buttocks"). Hailed when it was released in March, "The Deep" features 160 photos and 15 essays by deep-sea biologists. The Earth or at least the wildly extravagant oceans that constitute our largest ecosystem can still be wondrous strange, stranger than anything science fiction has imagined."--Jerome Weeks"NPR.org" (11/28/2007)"

Claire Nouvian's wondrous book "The Deep" contains the finest collection of photographs of the denizens of the deep that I know of."--Tim Flannery"New York Review of Books" (12/20/2007)"

About the Author

Claire Nouvian is a journalist, producer, and film director who has traveled the world for more than ten years, shooting wildlife for French and international television. She has worked on more than sixteen films, among them Expedition to the Abyss (Science Channel, 2004), which won the Best Adventure Documentary prize at the Amazonas Film Festival in Manaus, Brazil, 2005.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0226595668
• ISBN 13: 9780226595665
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 252