Ocean’s Menagerie: How Earth’s Strangest Creatures Reshape the Rules of Life

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From a world-renowned marine scientist, The Ocean’s Menagerie is a transporting exploration of how the strangest and most remarkable creatures on our planet are informing cutting-edge science.

Hundred-year-old giant clams, coral kingdoms the size and shape of cities, and jellyfish that glow in the dark- ocean invertebrates are among the oldest and most diverse organisms on earth, seeming to bend the rules of land-based biology. Although sometimes unseen in the deep, the spineless creatures contain 600 million years of adaptation to problems of disease, energy consumption, nutrition, and defence.

In The Ocean’s Menagerie, marine ecologist Dr. Drew Harvell takes us diving from Hawaii to the Salish Sea, from the Caribbean to Indonesia, to uncover the incredible underwater ‘superpowers’ of spineless creatures- we meet corals many times stronger than steel or concrete, sponges who create potent chemical compounds to fight off disease, and sea stars who garden the coastlines, keeping all the other nearby species in perfect balance. As our planet changes fast, the biomedical, engineering, and energy innovations of these wonderous creatures hold ever more important secrets to our own survival.

The Ocean’s Menagerie is a tale of biological marvels, a story of a woman’s passionate connection to an adventurous career in science, and a call to arms to protect the world’s most ancient ecosystems.

Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
Imprint: Bodley Head UK
Publication date: 23/04/2025