The Ocean's Menagerie: How Earth's Strangest Creatures Reshape the Rules of Life
About this ebook
A mind-expanding journey into our planet’s least explored and most critical frontier: the ocean – and the astonishing, ancient creatures who call it home.
'An enchanting book' SUNDAY TIMES
'Magic' TOM MUSTILL, author of How to Speak Whale
For hundreds of millions of years, the seas’ spineless creatures were the only animals on Earth. Hidden in the ocean’s vast depths, they have adapted to thrive in an evolving world. Only now are we beginning to discover their superpowers.
The Ocean’s Menagerie takes us down into this incredible underwater realm. From Hawaii to Indonesia to the Salish Sea, we meet coral kingdoms tougher than steel, jellyfish that glow like lanterns, and sponges harbouring potent cancer-fighting secrets.
As our planet changes fast, these otherworldly marvels hold promises for our own survival – and remind us why we must protect the ocean, our most valuable and vulnerable ecosystem, while we still can.
'Vividly revelatory' WILLIAM GIBSON
'Each page is full of wonder and surprise' STEVE BRUSATTE
'Harvell writes with tangible delight' SPECTATOR
'Thank goodness for marine biologists like Drew Harvell ... Fascinating' THE TIMES
About the author
Drew Harvell is Professor Emerita of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University. She is the author of Ocean Outbreak and A Sea of Glass which were, variously, the winner of the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature, recipient of the Rachel Carson Environmental Literature Award, one of the year’s best ‘Art Meets Science’ books by Smithsonian Magazine, Prose Award winner in Biological Sciences from the Association of American Publishers, and recipient of the Ecological Society of America Sustainability Science Award.
She has written for the New York Times, Seattle Times, The Hill, and CNN, and her work has been featured in the Atlantic, Guardian, Washington Post, Scientific American, Nature, and more. She also featured in the award-winning film, Fragile Legacy, and is currently a science adviser for Fabian Cousteau’s Underwater Space Station.
