Smithsonian Magazine and Nouvian's The Deep

Benthocodon jelly. Photo MBARI 2002
Hat tip to my brother. Smithsonian Magazine is featuring Claire Nouvian's The Deep and rightfully so they give it fantastic praise. This book came out in April and I immediately bought it from Amazon (where it is at the unbelievable price of $27!!). Several of the photos in the book are from expeditions I've participated in. The photography is stunning and every photo identifies each species and provides some amount of information. It is well-researched and will fascinate anyone age 2 to 92.

Laura Helmuth, the reviewer, hit it right on:

"The drama of discovery shows no sign of ending. In some surveys, 50 percent to 90 percent of the animals hauled up from the deep are unknown. We'll have to keep expanding our conception of what it means to be an Earthling."

If it wasn't for the constant discovery and finding new species in the deep sea, I would just be another burnt out jaded graduate student. Books like Nouvian's are inspiring at minimum. I keep going back to these invertebrate-packed pages and always seem to find something new, even though I have thumbed through the whole book several times!