Below the Edge of Darkness

February 1, 2021

Cofounder of the nonprofit Ocean Research & Conservation Association, MacArthur fellow Widder takes us beneath the waves to explore bioluminescence, among the most common and important means of communication in nature. As she explains, temporary blindness after surgery during college left her fascinated with light, but diving down 800 feet and witnessing wild bioluminescent activity really got her hooked.

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May 24, 2021
Marine biologist Widder illuminates life in the dark depths of the ocean in her fascinating debut. After a blood disorder caused her to temporarily lose her eyesight at age 18 while studying marine biology, she became obsessed with how some marine animals produce light to navigate the darkness. Once she graduated college, she landed a research position studying bioluminescence in marine life 800 feet beneath the sea’s surface. Using a small submersible called Deep Rover, she dove into the ocean’s darkness to answer the question, “How much occurs when we’re not down there stirring things up?” Along the way, Widder exuberantly describes the “quadrillions” of fish who depend on bioluminescence to survive in the depths of the open ocean, such as the bristlemouth, whose “light organs adorning its belly... allow it to hide in a place with no hiding places.” Though the ocean is teeming with life, she points out that due to “chronic underfunding,” less than 0.05% of the deep ocean has been traversed: “We’ve never had anything akin to... NASA for the ocean,” she laments. This informs and electrifies in equal measure. Agent: Farley Chase, Chase Literary.

June 1, 2021
An entertaining voyage to the bottom of the sea. In her first book, Widder, a veteran marine scientist and co-founder of the Ocean Research & Conservation Association, offers a captivating, watery-world personal memoir about exploring bioluminescence ("pure magic of living light") and an urgent plea to protect the world's largest ecosystem. As she laments, we're "managing to destroy the ocean before we even know what's in it." The author was hooked immediately after learning about bioluminescence. In 1982, on her first ocean expedition, she saw a vast array of "outlandish" bioluminescent sea creatures "about which most people knew almost nothing." Since then, Widder's career has been filled with dramatic highlights. On a 1984 expedition, she took her first deep water dive, to 800 feet, in the Wasp, a 2,000-pound metal suit in which she "oscillated like a tea bag on a string." She was "awestruck and baffled" by the lights she saw at the edge of darkness. Her second dive (1,831 feet) set a world depth record for the Wasp. Widder followed up that feat with a single-person submersible dive in Deep Rover, a 3.6 ton, "five-foot-diameter acrylic sphere with five-inch thick walls." On that dive, she filmed phenomenon never seen before in such detail. "I was sitting," she writes, "in the middle of a bioluminescent minefield!" After experiencing a harrowing near-death event due to a leaking sphere, with U.S. Navy support, a dive to 2,420 feet yielded further amazing discoveries, and another dive undertaken with the Discovery Channel and Fidel Castro's support resulted in a TV documentary. A special camera she developed allowed her to fulfill a goal of her lifetime, to be the first to film "the world's most famous invertebrate," the massive giant squid, "in its natural habitat." Widder's enthusiastic, joyful memoir amply describes the "wonder and exhilaration of discovery." Inspiring for science-loving readers and environmentalists young and old.

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July 1, 2021

Most of the livable habitat on earth is in the ocean, yet humans know very little about the sea and its lifeforms. Oceanographer and marine biologist Widder is on a mission both to pry the secrets "below the edge of darkness" from its denizens and to save this habitat before human pollution destroys it--an eventuality that would particularly impact developing nations and indigenous peoples. She has spent her life studying bioluminescence--the way creatures in wholly dark places use self-produced light to escape predators, find prey, or mate. In 2005, she founded the Ocean Research and Conservation Association, where she researches oceanic life and ways to curb its destruction. She notes that some nations spend huge sums of money to explore outer space, but we have a livable, largely unexplored habitat right here on Earth. She also describes advances in deep sea diving and photography; Widder's ideas have made many of these innovations possible. This book illustrates the careful, curious, years-long quest of a scientist in love with her work. Widder peppers her text with witty asides as footnotes that invite readers into her passion. VERDICT Highly recommended for those interested in marine and environmental studies.--Caren Nichter, Univ. of Tennessee at Martin

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Starred review from June 1, 2021
Marine biologist and MacArthur Fellow Widder endured dire medical struggles while in college, including a temporary loss of sight, which taught her to value every moment and made her an exceptionally sensitive investigator of the how and why of bioluminescence, the light generated by a wondrous variety of sea creatures, from the crystal jelly to the lantern shark. Widder innovated ways to study the "language of light" deployed by bioluminescent marine species, a demanding and risky undertaking requiring deep dives and new photographic strategies and instrumentation. A superbly captivating writer, Widder fluently elucidates complex scientific inquiries and findings pertaining to how bioluminescence helps marine species thrive in the watery realm where "there's nothing to hide behind." She also renders the ludicrous, the terrifying, and the enthralling with equal vim and vigor. As Widder dazzles readers with dramatic tales of expeditions frustrating and revelatory, describing such astonishments as seeing an "enormous squid" that was "completely new to science," she calls for an effort to explore the deep seas on par with the space program, passionately and expertly arguing that it is urgently important for us to understand the oceans, which are severely imperiled and essential to our survival. "We need to launch a new age of exploration, one that is focused on our greatest treasure, life."

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