The Brilliant Abyss

So comprehensive and insightful that it will be a long time before it’s surpassed … 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.

So comprehensive and insightful that it will be a long time before it’s surpassed … 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.

Scales’s approach is enthralling and richly expressed and highlights how closely our lives depend on the deep.

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 … The deep, she argues, is too vulnerable, and too crucial to the working of the planet to blindly ransack.

Accessible, enjoyable and written with infectious passion , this book is a compelling guide to a fascinating and often overlooked part of our planet.

Fascinating … The Brilliant Abyss is a manifesto for change as much as it is a description of an ecological crisis. Its overall effect – to insist that what’s already down there matters, even or especially when it is hidden from our view.

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.

Helen Scales explains why leaving the deep alone is so important – play your part by arming yourself with the facts.

Helen Scales’ beautiful account reveals the astonishing complexity and importance of the creatures of the abyss, to the planet and to us.

Helen Scales is a marine biologist, diver, surfer, broadcaster and writer who's spent hundreds of hours underwater watching fish. A familiar voice for the oceans, she's pondered the mysteries of the deep sea with Robin Ince and Brian Cox on BBC Radio 4's The Infinite Monkey Cage and donated an imaginary tank of seahorses to The Museum of Curiosity . She's a regular writer for BBC Focus and BBC Wildlife magazines. Among her radio documentaries she's explored the dream of living underwater and followed the trail of endangered snails around the world and back again.

@helenscales / helenscales.com