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The World Beneath

The Life and Times of Unknown Sea Creatures and Coral Reefs
Brief Description
New enhanced edition of the best-selling guide to sea creatures: The World Beneath! Meet the world's most fascinating sea creatures and explore the lives and curiosities of colourful fish and coral reefs. This spectacular volume features more than 300 colour photos and extraordinary text from a... Read More
Format: Hardback
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New enhanced edition of the best-selling guide to sea creatures: The World Beneath!

Meet the world's most fascinating sea creatures and explore the lives and curiosities of colourful fish and coral reefs. This spectacular volume features more than 300 colour photos and extraordinary text from a leading marine biologist and underwater photographer, who is the international expert on seahorses.

In this richly informative volume, brimming with new discoveries and more than three hundred colourful images of jaw-dropping fish and coral reefs, you'll swim in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. You'll be dazzled in the Coral Triangle and amazed in Triton Bay. Up close, you'll encounter the Cenderawasih fairy wrasse, with its fluorescent yellow streak; the polka-dot longnose filefish; and the multicoloured seadragon. There are scarlet-coloured corals, baby-blue sponges, daffodil crinoids, and all sorts of mystifying creatures that change colour at the drop of a hat. The whale shark appears almost larger than life, while the author's beloved pygmy seahorse, unless photographed, is nearly too tiny to see.

The wondrous creatures inside are charmers and tricksters, excelling in the arts of seduction and deception. You'll have the rare chance to observe and delight in their antics. You'll also learn about their diets, how they play, care for one another, live on one another, and mimic others when afraid. There is also compelling insight into the naming process, which sea creatures face extinction, and how we can help them before it's too late.

This new and expanded edition of The World Beneath includes fresh text from award-winning author Dr. Richard Smith, covering recent developments and discoveries affecting the rapidly changing landscape of the world's coral reefs. It also offers a wealth of new images from recent dives around the world and a thorough index.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781954641389

Publisher: Apollo Publishers

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 07 January 2025

Country: United States

Imprint: Apollo Publishers

Edition: 2nd New edition

Illustration: 4-color

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 203.0mm

Height: 254.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 336

About the Author

Dr. Richard Smith is a marine biologist and conservationist, an award-winning underwater photographer, an acclaimed public speaker, and the leader of diving expeditions around the world; he's been on more than four thousand dives since 1996. Dr. Smith has written hundreds of articles, published internationally, with a primary focus on conservation and marine life. His photographs have been featured around the world, including on dozens of magazine covers and in exhibitions. In 2018 he identified a new species of pygmy seahorse, having first photographed it five years previously. The new species, Hippocampus japapigu, is the size of a grain of rice and from the temperate waters of Japan. In 2020 he named the first pygmy seahorse to be found in the Indian Ocean, the South African Pygmy Seahorse, H. nalu. Dr. Smith has a bachelor's degree in Zoology, a master's degree in Marine Ecology and Evolution, and a PhD that he received for his pioneering research on pygmy seahorses; it was the first PhD ever awarded for the subject. Dr. Smith is a member of the IUCN Seahorse, Pipefish and Seadragon Specialist Groupand the focal point for pygmy seahorses in the group, as well as the world authority on these fishes and the Global Pygmy Seahorse Expert for iSeahorse.org, which uses citizen science to further research and conservation. He lives in Oxfordshire, England.

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