The Deep Sea

We don't know exactly how FW became interested in creatures of the deep sea, but he did. This has been his primary passion for the past six or seven months, and I've had a lot of fun researching for him, feeding his interest, and learning plenty myself along the way.

We started with the DVD of the BBC production Blue Planet, which has one whole episode about the deep ocean and its freaky inhabitants. Since nothing is more frustrating for FW than a movie or book with cool pictures but no identifying info, we look for things that have a lot of science and a lot of detail. Blue Planet delivers.

After FW had watched Blue Planet about a million times, a friend tipped me off to the absolutely mind-blowing book The Deep by Claire Nouvian. We found it in our local library, but later bought a copy for ourselves. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. The images are haunting and beautiful, and it all really opens your eyes to some of the phenomenal stuff going on in our natural world. The book is published by the University of Chicago Press, and their website has lots to see, and includes some cool, eerie music to go with the images.