Marine biologist Helen Scales returns for her third book with Bloomsbury’s popular science imprint Bloomsbury Sigma. After shells and fish, she now drags the reader down into the darkest depths of the deep sea. Both a beautifully written exploration of the ocean’s otherworldly wonders and a searing exposé of the many threats they face, The Brilliant Abyss is Scales’s most strident book to date.
I thought I knew of the horrors to be found on the open ocean.
I was wrong.
New York Times investigative reporter Ian Urbina has spent five years, three of which at sea, documenting the stories told here. What began as an award-winning series of articles has now been turned into a book by the same name: The Outlaw Ocean. In turns nail-biting and gut-wrenching, this brutal reportage shows the open ocean to be a dystopian place of crime and exploitation that is hiding in plain sight.
The Inquisitive Biologist