The face of the deep

by Bruce C. Heezen, Charles D. Hollister

Photographs and commentary explore the face of the ocean's floor, its geographical characteristics and animal life. Bibliogs

659 pages, Hardcover

First published August 31, 1972

Reviews

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book worth reading for many reasons. It is a piece of history, discussing the debates around Continental Drift, which wasn’t yet widely accepted in the early seventies. It contains beautiful, full page drawings by the one and only Marie Tharp. It contains hundreds of pictures of sea floor, from abyssal plains to mid ocean ridges, barren and full of benthic life. There are plenty of pictures that train the eye to see signs of life in tracks and scat. And the writing is never stilted, but clear and engaging, as science should be written.

There is a deep sense of awe and discovery throughout the book, with biblical quotations reminding us of the other great scientific endeavor of the sixties: man on the moon. The authors are of the old-school type that Gould writes of, who quote the Greeks, and Shakespeare, and Scripture, throughout its pages. And they open with this gem from Charles Darwin: “Everyone must know the feeling of triumph and pride which a grand view…communicates to the mind. In these little frequented [regions] there he also joined to it some vanity, that you are…the first man who ever…admired this view.” Perhaps it is, in this way, similar in tone to Howard Carter’s autobiographical work on being the first man in millennia to enter Tutankhamen’s tomb.

Another point of historical interest: it was written before the discovery of Hydrothermal Vents. So much classic marine geology, physical oceanography, marine chemistry, biology, and sedimentation (oozes siliceous and calcareous; manganese nodules and dusting over artifacts) is introduced in these pages, and yet there is nothing on Vents or their contributions to our understanding of all these!

In short, it’s a follow-up to the Challenger expedition, a continuation of that noble pursuit of scientific discovery, so often overshadowed today by application and technology.

[Charlotte R.S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rather dated book these days, considering how many advances have occurred in the deep sea sciences since the 1970s (subduction of oceanic crust, hydrothermal vents, and other discoveries). However, this book is still interesting for its historical worth (it still treats continental drift as a controversial theory), and thus far I have seen no other book contain so many deep sea images in one place. The images, in scope and variety, make the book worth owning.