Sunless and airless, with pressures that can exceed a ton per square centimeter, the deep ocean is a forbidding place. But it is also a fascinating one, the Earth's largest living realm. Its novel denizens are the subject of The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss — a coffee-table-sized book edited by French journalist Claire Nouvian. It features 200 gorgeous color photographs and 15 short essays by eminent ocean scientists, on subjects ranging from gelatinous predators, seamounts and deepwater coral reefs to hydrothermal vents, methane seeps and deep trenches (some deeper than the height of Mount Everest). Nouvian took her inspiration from a trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, three of whose experts are contributors to the book. The essays, which are aimed at a lay audience, take a backseat to fantastic images of the inhabitants of this alien world. In the deep, biomass is 5,000 times less dense than at the surface, but the species diversity is great, as the book illustrates. Browsers will undoubtedly find the alluring photographs irresistible.
