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The Brilliant Abyss by Helen Scales
It used to be thought that beyond about 1,600ft below the ocean’s surface, no life could survive at all, said Steven Poole in The Daily Telegraph. But the invention of “camera-equipped remote-control submarines” has given the lie to that notion: “the vasty deep” contains a staggering array of life, much of it startlingly weird.
In
The Brilliant Abyss, marine biologist Helen Scales provides a “wonderful introduction” to this realm. We learn of dumbo octopuses, vampire squids, and worms that feed on the bones of sperm whales that have fallen to the ocean floor, and “which are known – of course – as ‘bone-eating zombie worms’”. We meet “cyborg snails that make their shells of iron” – to protect themselves against the crushing pressure – and Yeti crabs with furry claws that thrive around hydrothermal vents. Scales’s enthusiasm for her subject is matched by her gift for visual evocation: “Picture”, she comman