EARTH'S AQUARIUM

In its varied ecosystems, Earth’s water world contains an astonishing diversity of life.

This oversized album (14.5 by 21.4 inches when opened), first published in the United Kingdom, contains vivid descriptions of 15 different watery environments, their representative plant and animal inhabitants, and how the pollution of the last 100 years is changing each of those worlds. The writer has chosen a wide variety of aquatic ecosystems from around the globe, 1/3 of them in Europe. These regions include mudflats, wetlands, salt marshes, estuaries, mangrove and kelp forests, coral and oyster reefs, seagrass meadows, open water, deep water, vents and seeps, sea ice, and slow- and fast-moving fresh water. Each is described in two double-page spreads, the first offering a general description and panorama, and the second, portraits and short descriptions of plants, vertebrates, invertebrates, and even algae and bacterial mats that characterize the web of life there. Most of the life-forms described can be found in the panorama. Additional text boxes explain what makes these systems distinctive. “Water is life,” Kaufman explains in an introductory section that defines ways water is measured, such as salinity, density, and acidity. The text is information rich, but much of it is printed in a distressingly small font. Rodrigues’ paintings are noteworthy; her representations of specific species are quite accurate, though occasionally creatures described as white or gray in the text are shown as rosy-orange. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Dramatic and depressing in its broad scope and its concerns.