Description

The Brilliant Abyss

The deep sea is the last, vast wilderness on Earth, and the single biggest living space on the planet. It could well be where life first began and it makes life possible everywhere else. Everyone and every living thing needs the deep.

For centuries, myth-makers and storytellers have concocted imaginary monsters of the abyss, and now scientists are looking there to discover multitudes of real, bizarre lifeforms. By studying the deep we gain a greater understanding of how this world of ours works. 

The Brilliant Abyss tells the story of humanity’s relationship with the deep sea – how we imagine, explore and exploit it. It captures the golden age of discovery now underway, uncovering the deep’s tremendous living wonders – from furry Yeti crabs on scorching hydrothermal vents, to underwater mountains clad in thousand year old corals, to deep-diving giants and elegant glowing worms that pirouette through the midnight zone.

The deep is remote and seemingly boundless, but not beyond human impacts. The Brilliant Abyss makes an urgent call to protect the deep – looking at environment issues such as overfishing, pollution and deep-sea mining – and examines what we can do about them.

We still face important issues over the future of the deep; will people keep making new versions of old mistakes, or will we do things differently this time?