The Brilliant Abyss: True Tales of Exploring the Deep Sea, Discovering Hidden Life and Selling the Seabed

So comprehensive and insightful that it will be a long time before it’s surpassed … It is hard to imagine a more timely or important book than The Brilliant Abyss. Carefully conceived and luminously written, it is certain to be a bestseller, which gives me hope that its urgent message might help save the world. * New Statesman * Scales’s approach is enthralling and richly expressed and highlights how closely our lives depend on the deep. * Observer * Scales’s great gift is for transmuting our awe at the wonders of the deep sea into a kind of quiet rage that they could soon be no more … The deep, she argues, is too vulnerable, and too crucial to the working of the planet to blindly ransack. * New York Times Book Review * Accessible, enjoyable and written with infectious passion, this book is a compelling guide to a fascinating and often overlooked part of our planet. * The Week * Fascinating … The Brilliant Abyss is a manifesto for change as much as it is a description of an ecological crisis. Its overall effect – to insist that what’s already down there matters, even or especially when it is hidden from our view. * New Republic * Helen Scales is one of those rare scientists who can capture the excitement of science. The Brilliant Abyss has a thrill on every page as she explores the deep and little known ocean. But this comes with a warning. Man’s destruction is now reaching the remotest corners of the planet and our survival depends on stopping it. * Mark Kurlansky, author of Cod * Helen Scales explains why leaving the deep alone is so important – play your part by arming yourself with the facts. * Coast magazine * Helen Scales’ beautiful account reveals the astonishing complexity and importance of the creatures of the abyss, to the planet and to us. * Callum Roberts, Professor of Marine Conservation and scientific advisor, BBC Blue Planet II *