Oceanic Wilderness

An astonishing voyage reveals remarkable new and unusual life forms.

The breathtaking beauty of marine life is profusely illustrated in this outstanding book. Five years in the making, Oceanic Wilderness visits the Earth's limits to shed light on the ocean's deepest depths. From aerial views to cavernous reefs, and from mid-ocean to tropical lagoons, this book is a fascinating photographic journey to environments from around the globe, including the Caribbean, the Central, South and West Pacific, Japan, temperate and tropical Australia, Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.

Oceanic Wilderness explores the oceans' creatures and plants through the eyes of one of the world's most prominent undersea photographers. The photographs provide a vibrant feast of form, color and motion. Colors are almost outrageously stunning -- but accurate. Some of the subjects are as small as 2 mm and have been captured with a microscopic lens. Some images show day views and night views of the same place to reveal surprising, unseen secrets. A number of subjects were unknown to science before Roger Steene captured them on film.

With more than 600 vivid color photographs and accurate descriptive text, Oceanic Wilderness demystifies the planet's darkest frontier, revealing surprising secrets and exquisite beauty. This is an ideal book for naturalists, travelers and divers -- and anyone else with a passion for marine conservation and photography.

Highlights:

• Features subjects never before photographed
• Explores the Caribbean Sea, the Central, South and West Pacific, Japan, temperate and tropical Australia, Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea
• Captures the stunning beauty and colors of the deep reef
• Provides views of oceanic worlds from above
• Presents life in and around tropical islands and deep reefs
• Reveals marine life in lagoons and tide pools, and among kelp and coral
• Shows microscopic organisms inhabiting a drop of saltwater
• Includes photographs of the ocean during the day and through the night.

Reference of marine life found in the Caribbean, the Pacific Ocean, Japan, Australia, Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, featuring 500 color photographs.

Publishers Weekly

This new book from Steene, a master of underwater photography, provides a detailed tour of the marine environments of the Caribbean, the Western Pacific and the Austral-Indonesian archipelago he's been exploring for 40 years with marine scientists like Gerald Allen (with whom Steene collaborated on several field guides). The colors of these underwater habitats alone are mind boggling; add an enormous cast of corals, sponges, anemones, fish and many other creatures-including some so newly discovered they haven't been named or described-and the material could become truly disorienting. Fortunately, the brief introductory text provides specific insights into the habitats included, and photo captions indicate size, location and even lens and lighting info (though a glossary of terms would have been helpful). More than 300 pages of spectacular color photos, including a vast range of species and behaviors (like mating frogfish and cuttlefish), examples of camouflage and mimicry (like a Mimic Octopus impersonating 14 different sea species, from a seasnake to a jellyfish), and astonishing color variations (more than a dozen brightly patterned flatworms), make this book hard to put down. Like visions of another world, these photographs have a magical quality that should delight anyone with an interest in animals, the sea or photography in general. (Sept.)

Roger Steene is among the world's most prominent underwater photographers. He has always lived near Australia's Great Barrier Reef, and is closely affiliated with several maritime biology institutions around the world. He has more than a dozen books on marine life to his credit, including Coral Seas.