The World Beneath - 2nd Edition by Richard Smith (Hardcover)

About the Book

Brimming with new discoveries, Smith's book takes you swimming in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans to meet the sea's most fascinating creatures. There are scarlet-colored corals, baby-blue sponges, and creatures that change color at the drop of a hat. From the pygmy seahorse to the whale shark, you'll learn what they eat, how they play, and how they care for, live on, and mimic each other. -- adapted from jacket

Book Synopsis

*New enhanced edition of the best-selling guide to sea creatures: The World Beneath!*

Meet the world's most fascinating sea creatures, see the lives and curiosities of colorful fish and coral reefs. This spectacular volume has more than 300 color 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 colorful 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 meet the Cenderawasih fairy wrasse, with its fluorescent yellow streak; the polka-dot longnose filefish; and the multicolored seadragon. There are scarlet-colored corals, baby-blue sponges, daffodil crinoids, and all sorts of mystifying creatures that change color at the drop of a hat. The whale shark is almost larger than life and the author's beloved pygmy seahorse, unless photographed, is almost too tiny to see.

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

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

Review Quotes

"Smith's passion for coral reefs, their inhabitants, and their protection shines through in this gorgeous, fascinating, informative, immersive book. Divers (and readers who would rather appreciate remote underwater habitats from the comfort of home) will cherish this book." --Library Journal

"Packed with vibrant images of sea life large and small, scientist and photographer Smith's volume is a splendid and thorough look beneath the surface of the ocean." --Publishers Weekly

"Smith vividly documents the amazing diversity of marine life associated with coral reefs and eloquently argues for their protection." --Library Journal

"This book by Dr. Richard Smith is a surprise-filled delight from start to finish." --DIVER magazine

"I was completely on board with Dr. Richard Smith's gorgeous new book and his aim to engage and educate the reader . . . and Dr. Smith does not disappoint. . . . I would recommend it without hesitation." --The Linnean

"A dazzling display of the deep's endangered denizens, from color-changing crustaceans to secretive sea dragons, and whale sharks to seahorses so small they are almost invisible." --The Lady, Books of the Year, 2020

"Richard Smith [reveals] secrets of coral reefs and some of their smaller, less well-known inhabitants in this fascinating and accessible book." --X-Ray International Dive Magazine

"I guarantee that once you have read this remarkable book, you will never again look at the reef in the same way again; your understanding of the workings of the reef, the total dependence of everything that exists upon everything else, will all suddenly fall into place." --British Society of Underwater Photographers

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.