I wasn’t looking to spend $35 for a book. In fact it is the most I have ever spent on a book in my life. Mind you I do own some pretty nice coffee table and reference books but they were all purchased from the bargain bin. However, when I ran across this book in a banner ad on the Daily KOS, I knew I had to have it now, not a year from now. Chalk one up for the power of effective internet marketing.
As I settled in to my reading chair in the living room with the glow of the Christmas lights in full splendor, I entered into a world that had always fascinated me. I thought back to my childhood and an old “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” paperback book that I used to own. In it were drawings of these crazy snaggle-toothed creatures that apparently lived at the bottom of the world. In the 70’s, Jacques Cousteau was making underwater exploration cool and it seemed that we didn’t need to venture into outer space if we wanted to boldly go where no man had gone before. In high school I toyed with the idea of being a marine biologist, but abandoned the notion when I discovered that I needed to spend 8 years in school and countless hours alone poring over charts, test tubes and smelly buckets of goo. The ocean and the miracles that lived there would have to be discovered by someone else.
Thirty years later and this book has enabled me to enter into a world that few are lucky enough to ever experience in person. Nouvian does an amazing job of organizing and putting things in perspective. Take a few minutes and ponder some of her remarks. She explains that on dry land the creatures are confined to the surface or at the highest point up in to the tallest trees. Then, consider that three quarters of the planet is covered by the oceans of the world. Now, let’s take it one step further and think about how vast the ocean really is. In some spots it is up to 7 miles deep, but on average it is 3800 meters or nearly 40 football fields. There are strange creatures which inhabit this entire column of water. When you do the math a bit further she explains that this watery world encompasses 99% of the habitat for the creatures of the earth.
In fact 85% of this watery world is made up of the deep sea. This is an area totally immersed in darkness. It is a world that we haven’t even remotely begun to explore. It is also an area that until recently was believed to be totally devoid of any life. How could anything live down there in total darkness? One of the greatest scientific misstatements ever made was by Roman naturalist and historian Pliny the Elder who stated in the first century A.D., that the definitive list of marine fauna was complete and that, “by Hercules, in the ocean…nothing exists which is unknown to us.”
I would never do this book justice by attempting to explain in a few paragraphs the sheer vastness of this world, so I will not even attempt it. I would in essence be doing the same thing as Pliny the Elder. Suffice it to say that Nouvian has gathered the most up to date and amazing photographs and descriptions of this wonderful and mysterious place. This book really deserves your attention. Read as much of it as you can in one sitting or pick it up and glance at it when you have a moment to spare. Kids will be fascinated by creepy looking creatures that most certainly were created by some mad genius armed with a tremendous imagination and the latest Photoshop software. How can these creatures survive in this total darkness? How can they possibly find a mate? How do they eat? If only Jules Verne could have seen this book, because fact in this case is much crazier than anything he could have imagined.