The World Beneath: The Life and Times of Unknown Sea Creatures and Coral Reefs

by Richard Smith

Overview

*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 florescent 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781954641389
Publisher:	Apollo Publishers
Publication date:	11/19/2024
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.00(d)

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.

Read an Excerpt

In the declining early evening light forty-five feet beneath the surface on a remote Indonesian coral reef, a tiny seahorse strangles another with its tail. Just three-quarters of an inch long, the diameter of a one-cent coin, and perfectly camouflaged against the windshield-sized fan-like gorgonian coral they inhabit, these creatures have a penchant for the dramatic. For my PhD research I spent six months watching and recording the antics of these mysterious and diminutive fish, collecting data on their biology and conservation—the first recorded observations of their social and reproductive behaviors. Denise’s pygmy seahorses had only been recognized by science four years previously, in 2003. Like other behaviors that occur on coral reefs every day, these skirmishes have presumably been happening for millennia. We just didn’t know to look for them.

Most of us hear about coral reefs and see them on nature documentaries, but unless we’re lucky enough to experience such awe-inspiring ecosystems firsthand, it can be hard to appreciate their intricacies. Exploring a tropical rain forest, you drip with sweat in a supersaturated and oppressive atmosphere waiting to spot an animal. A bird might call in the distance, the insect at your feet might unleash its high-pitched whine, and, perhaps, if you’re very lucky, and extremely patient, something larger might barrel toward you from the undergrowth. On a healthy coral reef, you can glimpse activity and life wherever you happen to look. Dozens of fish busy themselves with their daily commutes and travails.

In one hour on an Indonesian reef you will likely see over one hundred multihued and multiform species of fishes, if not double that—scrupulous cleaners, eccentric lovers, steadfast parents. The nervous comet fish pokes its marionette of a tail out of a hole, attempting to convince you it’s a menacing moray eel. Inches from your mask, a small but assertive damselfish warns you not to swim any closer to its precious algal farm. You may not know the names of all of them, but you are mesmerized: immersed in the hustle and bustle of their daily rituals.

Coral reefs continue to surprise and delight. My work has taken me all over the globe and introduced me to coral reefs in twenty-three countries. I have seen fish that wouldn’t even stretch across a dime and others that are longer than two London buses. I have seen vibrant and bustling coral gardens that stretch as far as the eye can see and I have captured the first photograph of creatures that have never before been pictured alive. Elsewhere in the ocean, I have come face to face with a warty file snake deep among the roots of a mangrove forest in Indonesia, photographed animals and behaviors in Japan that were still unknown to science, and spent hours scouring an algal-covered rock face to find an unnamed relative of the seahorse in New Zealand. My aim in this book is to share some of my passion and wonder for coral reefs and the astounding variety of creatures that call them home, while allowing those who aren’t lucky enough to experience this wonderful ecosystem firsthand a window under the waves.

Table of Contents

Preface

1. Diving In
2. How the Reef Works
3. The Coral Triangle
4. New Discoveries of the Twenty-First Century
5. Things That Live on Things
6. The Unseemly World of Anemonefish
7. Pygmy Seahorses: Tales from the Stables
8. Parasites Rule the Reef
9. Colors of the Reef
10. Flashers and Fairies
11. Coral Reefs in the Twenty-First Century

Afterword

Notes

Map

Index

Editorial Reviews

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

From the Publisher

07/29/2019

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. Expressing his “passion and wonder for coral reefs and the astounding variety of creatures that call them home,” Smith relates that, over the course of an extensive career in marine biology, he has “seen fish that wouldn’t even stretch across a dime and others that are longer than two London buses” and “spent hours scouring an algal-covered rock face to find an unnamed relative of the seahorse in New Zealand.” Early chapters deal with how reefs work, introducing elements such as coral colonies and plankton, and focusing on the so-called Coral Triangle, near eastern Indonesia, the Philippines, and Papua New Guinea. Smith’s countless photos of angelfish, butterfly fish, and the like help to illustrate the area’s extraordinary biodiversity. Later sections touch on climate change and “other anthropogenic disturbances” that have caused significant harm, including widespread coral bleaching linked directly to rising sea temperatures and witnessed by the author himself during scuba expeditions. In this impressive work, Smith effectively showcases much of what the marine world has to offer, while also reminding audiences how important it is to preserve and protect that world. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

09/01/2019

A British diver with a doctorate in marine biology, Smith has explored and photographed coral reef communities around the world, particularly the coral-rich seas of the western Pacific Ocean known as the Coral Triangle. After explaining the basic structure and ecology of coral reefs, Smith turns to specific reef inhabitants such as nudibranchs (sea slugs), amphipods (mini-crustaceans), anemone fish (of Finding Nemo fame), and the exquisitely camouflaged pygmy seahorses. Descriptions of these creatures hardly do them justice; fortunately, there are multiple photographs of each species. Concluding with a discussion of the threats facing reef ecosystems from climate change effects—especially coral bleaching—Smith warns that many reef communities may die out before we have had a chance to find and name the unknown species living there. The author's stunning photos bring the text to life in vivid colors; a map would have been helpful for pinpointing locations in the Coral Triangle. VERDICT Smith vividly documents the amazing diversity of marine life associated with coral reefs and eloquently argues for their protection. Recommended for armchair travelers and reef enthusiasts.—Cynthia Lee Knight, Hunterdon Cty. Historical Soc., Flemington, NJ

Library Journal