Into the Great Wide Ocean: Life in the Least Known Habitat on Earth

(Hardback)

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A sea-going scientist explores how ocean life thrives in one of the most mysterious environments on Earth

The open ocean, far from the shore and miles above the sea floor, is a vast and formidable habitat that is home to the most abundant life on our planet, from giant squid and jellyfish to angler fish with bioluminescent lures to draw prey into their toothy mouths. Into the Great Wide Ocean takes readers inside the peculiar world of the sea-going scientists who are providing tantalizing new insights into how the animals of the open ocean solve the problems of their existence.

Snke Johnsen vividly describes how life in the water column of the open sea contend with a host of environmental challenges, such as gravity, movement, the absence of light, pressure that could crush a truck, catching food while not becoming food, finding a mate, raising young, and forming communities. He interweaves stories about the joys and hardships of the scientists who explore this beautiful and mysterious realm, which is under threat from human activity and rapidly changing before our eyes.

Into the Great Wide Ocean presents the sea and its inhabitants as you have never seen them before and reminds us that the rules of survival in the open ocean, though they may seem strange to us, are the primary rules of life on Earth.

Author Bio

Snke Johnsen is professor of biology at Duke University. He is the author of The Optics of Life: A Biologists Guide to Light in Nature and the coauthor of Visual Ecology (both Princeton).