- Why is it octopuses, and not octopi or octopodes? - How did octopuses evolve to be so clever? - How can octopuses see and speak with their skin? EXAMINE these crafty hunters of the seabed - shape-shifting, skin-signalling and using complex tools - their remarkable abilities are still being uncovered. Written by celebrated marine biologist and documentarian Helen Scales, Octopuses is an enthralling introduction to these utterly unique creatures, the myths and fiction they have inspired, and what they can tell us about the roots of intelligence.

Octopuses: A Ladybird Expert Book (32) (The Ladybird Expert Series)

Science & Math

SCALES, Helen

Biological Sciences

Michael, Joseph

The Brilliant Abyss: Exploring the Majestic Hidden Life of the Deep Ocean, and the Looming Threat That Imperils It

Product Description 
A marine biologist vividly brings alive the extraordinary ecosystem of the deep ocean—a realm about which we know less than we do about the Moon—and shows how protecting rather than exploiting it will benefit mankind. 
“The oceans have always shaped human lives,” writes marine biologist Helen Scales in her vibrant new book The Brilliant Abyss, but the surface and the very edges have so far mattered the most. “However, one way or another, the future ocean is the deep ocean.” 
A golden era of deep-sea discovery is underway. Revolutionary studies in the deep are rewriting the very notion of life on Earth and the rules of what is possible. In the process, the abyss is being revealed as perhaps the most amazing part of our planet, with a topography even more varied and extreme than its Earthbound counterpart. Teeming with unsuspected life, an extraordinary interconnected ecosystem deep below the waves has a huge effect on our daily lives, influencing climate and weather systems, with the potential for much more—good or bad depending on how it is exploited. Currently the fantastic creatures that live in the deep—many of them incandescent in a world without light—and its formations capture and trap vast quantities of carbon that would otherwise poison our atmosphere; and novel bacteria as yet undiscovered hold the promise of potent new medicines. Yet the deep also holds huge mineral riches lusted after by many nations and corporations; mining them could ultimately devastate the planet, compounded by the deepening impacts of ubiquitous pollutants and rampant overfishing. 
Eloquently and passionately, Helen Scales brings to life the majesty and mystery of an alien realm that nonetheless sustains us, while urgently making clear the price we could pay if it is further disrupted. The Brilliant Abyss is at once a revelation and a clarion call to preserve this vast unseen world. 
 Review 
Praise for The Brilliant Abyss: 
“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 . . . She urges us to err on the side of preservation: no deep-sea mining, fishing, oil drilling or extraction of any kind. The deep, she argues, is too vulnerable, and too crucial to the working of the planet to blindly ransack.”—Robert Moor, New York Times Book Review (cover review) 
“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.” —Tim Flannery, New Statesman 
“Fascinating . . . The book’s purview is technically all of history, but the incredible paucity of interaction people have had with the deep sea means that most of the information here takes the form of news delivered as a dire, last-minute warning . . . 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.” —Jo Livingstone, New Republic 
“Vivid . . . [Outlines] some of the staggering biological creatures that have already been uncovered—with the promise that many more await discover

Nature & Ecology

Atlantic Monthly Press

A marine biologist vividly brings alive the extraordinary ecosystem of the deep ocean--a realm about which we know less than we do about the Moon--and shows how protecting rather than exploiting it will benefit mankind. "The oceans have always shaped human lives," writes marine biologist Helen Scales in her vibrant new book The Brilliant Abyss, but the surface and the very edges have so far mattered the most. "However, one way or another, the future ocean is the deep ocean." A golden era of deep-sea discovery is underway. Revolutionary studies in the deep are rewriting the very notion of life on Earth and the rules of what is possible. In the process, the abyss is being revealed as perhaps the most amazing part of our planet, with a topography even more varied and extreme than its Earthbound counterpart. Teeming with unsuspected life, an extraordinary interconnected ecosystem deep below the waves has a huge effect on our daily lives, influencing climate and weather systems, with the potential for much more--good or bad depending on how it is exploited. Currently the fantastic creatures that live in the deep--many of them incandescent in a world without light--and its formations capture and trap vast quantities of carbon that would otherwise poison our atmosphere; and novel bacteria as yet undiscovered hold the promise of potent new medicines. Yet the deep also holds huge mineral riches lusted after by many nations and corporations; mining them could ultimately devastate the planet, compounded by the deepening impacts of ubiquitous pollutants and rampant overfishing. Eloquently and passionately, Helen Scales brings to life the majesty and mystery of an alien realm that nonetheless sustains us, while urgently making clear the price we could pay if it is further disrupted. The Brilliant Abyss is at once a revelation and a clarion call to preserve this vast unseen world.

What the Wild Sea Can Be: The Future of the World’s Ocean

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Elementum is a biannual journal that explores our place in the natural world through new writing. In this Edition we join women responding to a shifting environment in lace, cyanotype and stone. We follow colourful trails of fish with marine biologist Helen Scales and trace an alphabet of otters with Jackie Morris. We track down fossilised sea urchins impressed in burial mounds and church windows, and learn how observing birds can help us to pin memories to places. Wyl Menmuir finds that working with wood helps to continually reshape his writing practice, while Jane Lovell shares her path through a poem, where words glimmer with hope in a dark landscape. There is new writing from Whitney Brown, Will Burns and Alex Preston and striking imagery, newly commissioned, from Tor Falcon, Neil Gower and Catherine Hyde. Other articles explore the long-forgotten but now recently recovered work of Anna Atkins and Emma L. Turner. More than a hundred years ago, these pioneering natural historians were harnessing technology to frame the future of nature photography while breaking the mould of who might tell the story of Britain's algae, ferns and birds. We travel from the chalk of the English South Downs to the reedbeds of Norfolk, and from a Welsh valley sculpted by ice and dynamite to the foot of a cliff in Northwest England, where Annie Worsley uncovers the imprints of our prehistoric coastal ancestors, a mother's straight path along the sand encircled again and again by the small footprints of her children. This edition is 160 pages, limp notch bound for durability and printed in full colour in the UK using vegetable inks on FSC-approved uncoated paper with coated paper interludes. Size 274x210mm Printed in the UK

Elementum Journal 2018: Edition Four 4: Shape

Arts & Photography

Preston, Alex

Menmuir, Wyl

Birkhead, Tim

Gower, Neil

Painting

Elementum

Elementum is a biannual journal that explores our place in the natural world through new writing. In this Edition we gather round the hearth, as we have since the Stone Age, to listen to stories, honour those who have gone before and lean in to discern what the earth might be telling us. Raynor Winn writes from experience about what happens when we leave the four walls we call home and walk into the unknown, while Colin Taylor learns from the animals that curl round our feet but whose domestication is only skin deep. With Helen Scales, who draws on the writing of Rachel Carson, we follow currents that unite bodies of water that are all one ocean, and with Stephen Moss we scan the heavens for lines of migration travelled by birds and butterflies. In rural Humboldt County, artist-blacksmith Monica Coyne considers carbon and iron - elements that unite us with every living thing - and questions the mighty but destructive forces of her trade. This edition offers work from storytellers - such as Sara Baume, Wyl Menmuir and Eleanor Parker - while celebrating the vision of artists including Lucy Eldridge, Neil Gower and Catherine Hyde. With other storytellers, we travel from the fired earth of Hawai'i to the Flow Country peatlands of Scotland, and from the early settlements of Papua New Guinea to the towns of medieval Humberside, learning from the expertise of others and exploring different ways to capture a deep connection to place. Above all we understand, as Nicola Davies and Jim Crumley urge, to look at and listen intently to a particular patch of land to find the insight innate in the creatures that live there. This edition is 160 pages, limp notch bound for durability and printed in full colour in the UK using vegetable inks on FSC-approved uncoated paper with coated paper interludes. Size 274x210mm Printed in the UK

Elementum Journal 2019: Edition Five 5: Hearth

CRUMLEY, JIM

TAYLOR, Colin

Moss, Stephen

Winn, Raynor

This is an inspiring tour of the world's oceans and 80 of its most notable inhabitants. Beautifully illustrated, the book includes fascinating stories of the fish, shellfish and other sea life that have somehow impacted human life - whether in our medicine, culture or folklore - in often surprising and unexpected ways.

Around the Ocean in 80 Fish and other Sea Life (-)

Laurence King Publishing

Around The World in 50 Fish 1000 Piece Puzzle

LAURENCE KING

Wild Seas Jigsaw - Stories of Nature's Greatest comebacks: 1000 Piece Jigsaw with 20 Shaped Pieces

A biological and cultural biography of the ubiquitous yet mystical seashell.
Seashells, stretching from the deep past into the present day, are touchstones leading into fascinating realms of the natural world and cutting-edge science. In Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells, marine biologist Helen Scales shows how seashells have been sculpted by the fundamental rules of mathematics and evolution; how they gave us color, gems, food, and new medicines. 
Members of the phylum Mollusca are among the most ancient animals on the planet. Their shells provide homes for other animals, and across the ages, people have used shells not only as trinkets but also as a form of money, and as powerful symbols of sex and death, prestige and war. 
The science and natural history of shells are woven into a compelling narrative, revealing their cultural importance and the ways they have been used by humans over the millennia, even as a source of mind-bending drugs. After surviving multiple mass extinctions millions of years ago, mollusks and their shells still face an onslaught of anthropocentric challenges, including climate change and corrosive oceans. But rather than dwelling on all that is lost, Scales emphasizes that seashells offer an accessible way to reconnect people with nature, helping to bridge the gap between ourselves and the living world. Spirals in Time shows why nature matters, and reveals the hidden wonders that you can hold in the palm of your hand.

Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells (Bloomsbury Sigma)

Bloomsbury Sigma

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