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The Brilliant Abyss

True Tales of Exploring the Deep Sea, Discovering Hidden Life and Selling the Seabed

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The Brilliant Abyss

By: Helen Scales
Narrated by: Helen Scales
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Bloomsbury presents The Brilliant Abyss written and read by Helen Scales.

The deep sea is the last, vast wilderness on the planet. This is the story of our relationship with it – how we imagine, explore and exploit it.

For centuries, myth-makers and storytellers have concocted imaginary monsters of the deep, and now scientists are looking there to find bizarre, unknown species, chemicals to make new medicines, and to gain a greater understanding of how this world of ours works. With an average depth of 12,000 feet and chasms that plunge much deeper, it forms a frontier for new discoveries.

The Brilliant Abyss tells the story of our relationship with the deep sea – how we imagine, explore and exploit it. It captures the golden age of discovery we are currently in and looks back at the history of how we got here, while also looking forward to the unfolding new environmental disasters that are taking place miles beneath the waves, far beyond the public gaze.

Throughout history, there have been two distinct groups of deep-sea explorers. Both have sought knowledge but with different and often conflicting ambitions in mind. Some people want to quench their curiosity; many more have been lured by the possibilities of commerce and profit. The tension between these two opposing sides is the theme that runs throughout the book, while readers are taken on a chronological journey through humanity’s developing relationship with the deep sea. The Brilliant Abyss ends by looking forwards to humanity’s advancing impacts on the deep, including mining and pollution and what we can do about them.©2021 Helen Scales (P)2021 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Biological Sciences Biology Earth Sciences Ecosystems & Habitats Environment Nature & Ecology Outdoors & Nature Science Conservation Mining
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Critic reviews

Scales’s approach is […] enthralling and richly expressed and highlights how closely our lives depend on the deep.”
It is hard to imagine a more timely or important book than The Brilliant Abyss.
Marine biologist Helen Scales’s The Brilliant Abyss is a literary bathysphere enabling us to explore this final frontier from the comfort of dry land, and a passionate plea for us to preserve ocean biodiversity, even if just for our own good.
Helen Scales is one of those rare scientists who can capture the excitement of science. The Brilliant Abyss has a thrill on every page as she explores the deep and little known ocean. But this comes with a warning. Man’s destruction is now reaching the remotest corners of the planet and our survival depends on stopping it.
The Brilliant Abyss, Helen Scales’s sweeping survey of the seafloor, is brave enough to risk a darker and, in some ways, more satisfying tone … Scales’s great gift is for transmuting our awe at the wonders of the deep sea into a kind of quiet rage that they could soon be no more.
Written by a highly articulate expert in the field, The Brilliant Abyss is so comprehensive and insightful that it will be a long time before it’s surpassed … In the first half of her book, Scales does an excellent job of animating the almost unbelievable panoply of life in the deep. As an explorer herself, she has seen things first-hand that few others will ever witness. But it is the second part of her book, devoted to the human impacts on the abyss, which brought gasps to my throat … It is hard to imagine a more timely or important book than The Brilliant Abyss. Carefully conceived and luminously written, it is certain to be a bestseller, which gives me hope that its urgent message might help save the world.
Fascinating … The Brilliant Abyss is a manifesto for change as much as it is a description of an ecological crisis. Its overall effect is not to clarify the waters … but to insist that what’s already down there matters, even or especially when it is hidden from our view.
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I enjoyed this audiobook a great deal and found it fascinating throughout. The polemical tone of the chapters concerning deep-sea mining and the inevitably terrible repercussions of this activity, for me, was entirely relatable, moving and thought-provoking. I reckon it’s a cracking book.

The author’s narration is superb. Her voice is lovely to listen to - very engaging and clear.

Excellent content and narration

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A magical account of first hand experiences and insightful information about the deep and its importance in the cyclic and connected food chain within eco systems which I thoroughly enjoyed. This narrative also reveals the very real and current political discussions surrounding our future on this planet.

Insightful and thought provoking

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This was an awesome, beautiful book, the first half is full of the wonders of the deep. There is a vocabulary all its own to describe the creatures and life deep under the sea. The terror comes when you hear what the ever charming human race have been doing and plan to do. Thank goodness for the advocates of the sea and their relentless work to protect it and, by extension, all of us. The last part of the book gives a kernel of hope, but we need to be actively pushing our leaders in the direction of innovation that will in turn protect our magnificent oceans, and to be doing our bit locally, daily, to reduce our relentless overconsumption and reliance on single use plastics.

A book of wonder and terror

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Helen clearly has a passion for the deep and that comes across beautifully when she is describing the abyssal layer of the Ocean. It brings up some very serious points that man kind must over come so we dont lose such a beautiful and mesmerising place.

Great book.

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It's a great read for people who have an interest in the ocean and it's biology and requires no scientific background to understand the concepts being discussed. I would've liked more of the book to go towards exploring the species of the deep in greater detail like the segment on Yeti crabs. The segments on environmental issues and how we're impacting the deep

Great read on the deep

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