You have just got to love a colorful, large-format encyclopedia on sharks, and this is one of the best.
--American Reference Books Annual
An up-to-date encyclopedia of the world's most ancient predators.
The Encyclopedia of Sharks is a richly illustrated and fact-filled reference on all the world's species of sharks. The author debunks the fearful myths and fierce legends, providing straightforward facts and the latest research on sharks. More than 200 striking photographs show sharks in their natural habitats. Detailed drawings illustrate the anatomical features unique to sharks, such as their fearsome but short-lived teeth.
The book includes authoritative and updated information on:
- Evolution and design of the shark
- Classifications and orders
- Understanding the shark
- The life of the shark -- how it feeds, breeds and migrates
- Shark "supersense" -- how it survives in the aquatic environment
- The need for protection and conservation -- how sharks are now endangered by over fishing and "finning."
Also included is a 50-page comprehensive, all-color section featuring and explaining the world's most important breeds.
Through its lively text, spectacular photography, and charts, maps and illustrations, The Encyclopedia of Sharks will encourage an understanding of these complex creatures.
A comprehensive new look at the great white shark.
Great White Shark covers all aspects of this great but sadly misunderstood ocean predator. There are three sections: Portrait of the Great White; Searching for the Great White; and Requiem for the Great White? Together they describe shark biology and behavior (some of it previously unknown, such as hunting in groups) and describe how researchers and conservationists study and protect sharks.
The last section considers the plight of the shark and paints an accurate portrait of this remarkable creature. It also surveys the deadly dangers faced by great white sharks, such as finning and ocean garbage. More than 100 dramatic photographs of sharks fill the book.
Topics include:
Four experts -- underwater photographer Fr d ric Buyle, oceanographer Catherine Vadon, marine zoologist Michael Scholl, and marine biologist Bernard S ret -- reflect on the future of the species now living on borrowed time.
Great White Shark is an exciting new chapter in shark research.
One of the most fascinating and amazing underwater photography ever. The author summarizes "I was 20 meters from the calf and his mother. He nuzzled her and then to my surprise swam straight towards me. I didn't take my eyes off him through my lens and snapped continuously as he came closer and closer. I dared to look over the top of my camera and there he was, just a few feet away looking me straight in the eye."
New insights into the world's most-feared predator.
Sharks are exquisite creatures refined and honed by competitive forces that have lived in balance with ocean prey for millions of years. They live in every ocean habitat on Earth, from shallow tide pools to the deep abyss, and from the open ocean to where rivers meet the sea. In Sharks a top research scientist explores what has made sharks such successful predators, how they differ from other animals in their biological success and what unique advantages evolution has conferred. Sharks is illustrated with uniquely sourced photography demonstrating newly observed behavior, scientific findings and recent developments in our understanding of how they live. Sharks is both a spectacular visual celebration, and a scientific document that explores in detail their unique physiology.
A powerful swimming stroke is delivered from sharks' muscles directly to their tough skin shell forcing their body to "inflate" like a car tire with each flex, then quickly become fluid to glide as the muscles relax. By diving through the various water layers, a shark may locate and follow chemical scent trails that could lead to food concentrations. Thus a shark moving from one temperature layer to the next can expose its sensory equipment to new chemical cues and potentially new food sources. Some deep-sea sharks also lure prey with their light-producing organs.
Salvador Jorgensen has combined the latest discoveries of new species, newly-documented shark behavior, and the best photographs, to give a "state-of-knowledge" picture of sharks. Unique pictures of shark births, recently discovered creatures from the Ocean Census research, and details of sharks' skin, eyes, teeth and heads (including a comparison of nine different hammerhead varieties) make this a book every shark enthusiast will want. It will also debunk many myths about shark behavior, and give readers a true, 21st-century documentation of a very popular wild animal.
Sharks features illustrated profiles of species living in the shallow reefs and also those living in the open ocean along with a unique "cladogram" family tree that opens into a gatefold and profiles every known species.
At the center of Deep Blue Home--a penetrating exploration of the ocean as single vast current and of the creatures dependent on it--is Whitty's description of the three-dimensional ocean river, far more powerful than the Nile or the Amazon, encircling the globe. It's a watery force connected to the earth's climate control and so to the eventual fate of the human race.
Whitty's thirty-year career as a documentary filmmaker and diver has given her sustained access to the scientists dedicated to the study of an astonishing range of ocean life, from the physiology of "extremophile" life forms to the strategies of nesting seabirds to the ecology of "whale falls" (what happens upon the death of a behemoth).
No stranger to extreme adventure, Whitty travels the oceanside and underwater world from the Sea of Cortez to Newfoundland to Antarctica. In the Galapagos, in one of the book's most haunting encounters, she realizes: "I am about to learn the answer to my long-standing question about what would happen to a person in the water if a whale sounded directly alongside--would she, like a person afloat beside a sinking ship, be dragged under too?"
This book provides extraordinary armchair entree to gripping adventure, cutting-edge science, and an intimate understanding of our deep blue home.
A New York Times Bestseller
Inspired by a profound experience swimming with wild dolphins off the coast of Maui, Susan Casey set out on a quest to learn everything she could about these creatures. Her journey takes her from a community in Hawaii known as "Dolphinville," where the animals are seen as the key to spiritual enlightenment, to the dark side of the human-cetacean relationship at marine parks and dolphin-hunting grounds in Japan and the Solomon Islands, to the island of Crete, where the Minoan civilization lived in harmony with dolphins, providing a millennia-old example of a more enlightened coexistence with the natural world. Along the way, Casey recounts the history of dolphin research and introduces us to the leading marine scientists and activists who have made it their life's work to increase humans' understanding and appreciation of the wonder of dolphins--the other intelligent life on the planet.
