In Oceans Deep, Bill Streever
In Oceans Deep, Bill Streever
List: $27.99 | Sale: $19.59
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In Oceans Deep
Courage, Innovation, and Adventure Beneath the Waves

Author: Bill Streever

Narrator: Jay Snyder

Unabridged: 9 hr 3 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/02/2019

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included

Synopsis

In this masterful account in the spirit of Bill Bryson and Ian Frazier, a longtime deep-sea diver masterfully weaves together the science and history of Earth's last remaining frontier: the sea.
In an age of unprecedented exploration and innovation, our oceans remain largely unknown, and endlessly fascinating: full of mystery, danger, beauty, and inspiration. In Oceans Deepcelebrates the daring pioneers who tested the limits of what the human body can endure under water: free divers able to reach 300 feet on a single breath; engineers and scientists who uncovered the secrets of decompression; teenagers who built their own diving gear from discarded boilers and garden hoses in the 1930s; saturation divers who lived under water for weeks at a time in the 1960s; and the trailblazing men who voluntarily breathed experimental gases at pressures sufficient to trigger insanity.
Tracing both the little-known history and exciting future of how we travel and study the depths, Streever's captivating journey includes seventeenth-century leather-hulled submarines, their nuclear-powered descendants, a workshop where luxury submersibles are built for billionaire clients, and robots capable of roving unsupervised between continents, revolutionizing access to the ocean.
In this far-flung trip to the wild, night-dark place of shipwrecks, trapped submariners, oil wells, innovative technologies, and people willing to risk their lives while challenging the deep, we discover all the adventures our seas have to offer -- and why they are in such dire need of conservation.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jim on August 01, 2020

If you're really into diving, you'll get more out of this than I did. I found a entire chapters on the technical aspects of a specific sort of diving rather boring, although the history was often really interesting. Our ignorance of how pressures affect us is as incredible as what people have endure......more

Goodreads review by Rae on July 05, 2019

Read this review and others on my blog: [URL not allowed] In Oceans Deep by Bill Streever dives deep and explores human innovation beneath the ocean’s waves. I thoroughly enjoyed reading In Oceans Deep by Bill Streever. The book was interesting, insightful, and kept my interest the whole......more

Goodreads review by Kirstin on April 26, 2021

Although I have zero interest in diving myself, I find it fascinating to read about. Streever has an engaging style and I will seek out his other books.......more

Goodreads review by Andrew on January 14, 2020

This is a good history of underwater exploration and the issues that has faced over the centuries. Though it's discussed by topic rather than being a chronological history, it covers ancient sponge divers right up to modern robotics and autonomous underwater vehicles. It falls apart a bit at the end......more

Goodreads review by Ricky on September 11, 2024

This book was a lot of fun, and inspiring. I didn’t enjoy the last two chapters, didn’t feel much was happening just stating facts about technology trying to do interviews. I loved the beginning about the history or diving and submarines. I especially enjoyed the explanation of Boyle’s law and how i......more

Quotes

"A broad-spectrum examination of underwater adventuring...Mr. Streever's writing is lucid on subjects ranging from gas chemistry to dredging to underwater robotics."—Wall Street Journal

"A fascinating...journey for readers into a little-known world."—Anchorage Daily News

"A fine writer with genuine sea credentials...Streever's book makes clear that the deep, though much closer to us, is still tantalizingly distant."—Natural History Magazine

"In this homage-cum-history of human endeavor in the ocean depths, biologist, writer and diver Bill Streever brings to light a region less explored than the Moon."—Nature Magazine

"With a real knack for storytelling, Streever evocatively puts the reader in the helmets, flippers, and submersibles of sea explorers throughout history...Streever crafts a book to be enjoyed by divers and general readers alike."— Publishers Weekly

"Ultimately, this timely and richly told story became something the author did not intend: an invaluable survey of how much damage has

been done and how much we will lose if we don't protect the seas."—Booklist

"A buoyant, at times thrilling, account of the deep sea experience, perfect for divers and other lovers of life beneath the waves."— Kirkus Review

"Streever tells a story that captures human fascination with the ocean, and encourages readers to become more interested in what lies beneath the waves."—Shelf Awareness

Bill Streever has written a gripping and important book about the sea, its science, and the technologies we've invented to begin to experience it, but also about our own humanity-and our future. I loved following him on this extraordinary deep dive into the largest and still most mysterious realm of this incredible planet we all share—JuliBerwald, author of Spineless

In Oceans Deep combines painstaking research with narrative flair and a genuine love for the subject...It is both an education and a terrific read—ChrisWright journalist and author of No MoreWorlds to Conquer

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