Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
![Loading indicator](/images/ajax-loader-bar.gif)
Prior to John Ross's successful retrieval in 1818 of six pounds of worm-filled mud from the bottom of Baffin Bay, it was widely believed that no life could possibly flourish in the dark, cold, pressurized waters of the deep Atlantic Ocean.
Subsequent expeditions - conducted on ships with trawls, in submersibles such as William Beebe's bathysphere and Jacques Cousteau's Deepstar, and by remote-controlled and robotic diving devices - have unveiled a mind-boggling menagerie, a riot of deep-sea fauna with which we are still only marginally acquainted.
Even today, only a handful of people have seen the pillow lava, smoking chimneys, and shimmering water of the hydrothermal vent fields, which are colonized by blind white crabs, clams as big as footballs, and gigantic tube worms with vivid red gills. Only a lucky few explorers of the abyss have encountered Vampyroteuthis infernalis, the "vampire squid from hell," with its complex clusters of photophores that it can turn on and off at will.
A mere smattering of marine biologists have witnessed the herds of pulsating sea cucumbers that feed contentedly in the sand and mud of the Atlantic floor. And the same is true for the amazing pelican eel, whose body consists almost entirely of toothless mouth, and for the four-inch-long male anglerfish that permanently attaches himself to the nearly four-foot-long female.
.
In the strikingly illustrated Deep Atlantic, Richard Ellis brings us face-to-face with these unexpected efflorescences of evolution - fish, mammals, and members of other phyla that have been able to assume incredible shapes and great size thanks to the gravity-canceling buoyancy of water. The animals discussed and pictured herein are adapted for life in the predominant environment on our planet, since 70 percent of its surface is underwater and 90 percent of that water is more than a mile deep.
Yet it is an environment as foreign to us as another universe. As we have come to expect from his previous books, Richard Ellis is here again our engrossing guide to the last frontier on earth.
Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
![Loading indicator](/images/ajax-loader-bar.gif)
Previews available in: English
Subjects
Abyssal zone, Marine ecology, Deep-sea sounding, History, Marine biology, Ocean bottom, Atlantic oceanPlaces
Atlantic OceanShowing 3 featured editions. View all 3 editions?
Edition | Availability |
---|---|
1
Deep Atlantic: life, death, and exploration in the abyss
1998, Lyons Press
in English
1558216634 9781558216631
|
aaaa
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
2
Deep Atlantic: life, death, and exploration in the abyss
1996, Alfred A. Knopf
in English
- 1st ed.
0679433244 9780679433248
|
cccc
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
3
Deep Atlantic: life, death and exploration in theabyss
1996, Knopf, Alfred A. Knopf
in English
0709060262 9780709060260
|
zzzz
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
Book Details
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references (p. 329-376) and index.
Originally published: New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.
Classifications
The Physical Object
ID Numbers
Community Reviews (0)
Feedback?August 4, 2024 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
December 25, 2021 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
February 13, 2020 | Edited by MARC Bot | remove fake subjects |
May 15, 2019 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
December 9, 2009 | Created by WorkBot | add works page |