IF YOU WENT TO THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN

An invitation to explore the undersea world, from its sunlight zone to its darkest hadal depths.

Offering a compelling sense of just how deep our oceans are, Wright’s page-filling illustrations switch partway down from a horizontal orientation to vertical, with a change of perspective from close up to distant. He also fills each successively darkening scene with teeming hosts of marine life—until, at least, the seven-mile mark with Challenger Deep, where the swarms thin and only the hardiest amphipods can survive. Few humans have reached or seen so far; even at half that distance, McIntyre writes evocatively, “the water is [so] heavy, it would be like holding a hippo on your toe,” and, in the book’s final scene, a bulbous submersible shining weak lights into the apparently endless dark at the very bottom seems an intruder. Noting that 90 percent of our oceans remains unexplored, the author goes on to offer a short history of recent dives and research findings and then, in a pictorial foldout, recaps the long descent zone by oceanic zone, noting significant wildlife found in each as she goes.

Telling glimpses of the ocean’s wonders, living and otherwise.