Summary of The Underworld by Susan Casey: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean E-Book

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• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

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Summary of The Underworld by Susan Casey: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean
 
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The Underworld is a captivating book by Susan Casey, a bestselling author of The Soul of an Octopus. The book explores the mysterious world beneath the waves and the men and women who seek to uncover its secrets. The deep ocean has been a source of wonder and terror for centuries, but cutting-edge technologies have allowed scientists and explorers to dive miles beneath the surface. The underwater world is home to pink gelatinous predators, shimmering creatures, ancient animals with glass skeletons, and sharks that live for half a millennium. Casey's journey takes readers on a fascinating journey through the history of deep-sea exploration, from myths and legends to storied shipwrecks and the first intrepid bathysphere pilots. The book emphasizes the importance of understanding the deep ocean's complexity and ecological importance in a time of increasing threats from climate change, industrial fishing, pollution, and mining companies.

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Summary of The Underworld by Susan Casey: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean

Susan Casey's The Underworld explores the mysterious underwater world, revealing its secrets and the importance of understanding its complexity and ecological importance. The book follows scientists and explorers as they explore the deep ocean, uncovering secrets and encountering pink gelatinous predators, shimmering creatures, ancient animals, and sharks.BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

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Summary of The Underworld

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Summary of

Susan Casey’s book

Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean

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Summary of The Underworld by Susan Casey: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean

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This is an unofficial summary & analysis of Susan Casey’s “The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean” designed to enrich your reading experience.

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The contents of the summary are not intended to replace the original book. It is meant as a supplement to enhance the reader's understanding. The contents within can neither be stored electronically, transferred, nor kept in a database. Neither part nor full can the document be copied, scanned, faxed, or retained without the approval from the publisher or creator.

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Author’s Note

The deep ocean is a vast region of water below two hundred meters, or approximately six hundred feet, where sunlight disappears. It is commonly referred to as the twilight zone, midnight zone, abyssal zone, and hadal zone. The abyssal zone is also known as the abyss, but it has a broader meaning of a deep and seemingly bottomless chasm. Submersibles, which are capable of sustained, independent undersea operations, are used in deep-sea vehicles. Manned submersibles carry passengers and life-support systems, while unmanned submersibles are robots that are tethered to a ship and driven remotely by a human pilot.

The deep ocean occupies 95% of the ocean's volume and is typically referred to as a single entity. Bathymetry, the science of measuring seabed terrain, charts the depths and contours of the seafloor in three-dimensional relief. Metric measurements are used by American and British readers, while mariners use nautical miles and fathoms.

Prologue

The author is on a ship deck, watching the ocean's disorderly mess and gauging the wind. They are planning to launch an eleven-ton deep-sea submersible with two people in it, hoping to reach the ocean's abyss. The sub would be a prototype, capable of diving repeatedly with a pilot and passenger to full ocean depth. The author's fascination with the deep began with a childhood dream of floating on a moonlit sea, where big fish circled ominously. This dream was haunting, but the author was determined to explore it.

The author's fascination with the deep began with his childhood dream of floating on a moonlit sea in a small boat, where big fish circled ominously. He watched The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau in the seventies, and the episode where the Calypso sailed to the South Pacific to explore sunken World War II wrecks in a lagoon. This experience allowed him to join the expeditions vicariously, from the safety of land.

The author's desire to visit the undersea world began when he learned how to swim at almost ten, and he was shaky about it. The author's fascination with the deep and the idea of exploring the underwater world fueled his desire to explore the underwater world.

The author grew up in a suburb of Toronto near Canadian Shield lakes, where the waters are inky green-black and shadowed by craggy bluffs and boreal forests. They spent summers at Port Severn, a place filled with dark intrigue and the presence of animals such as northern pikes, muskies, and sturgeons. The author developed the skills to immerse themselves in the aquatic world, becoming a competitive swimmer, open-water swimmer, free diver, and scuba diver. The Pacific Ocean became their favorite playground, the largest waters on earth. The author moved to Hawaii to be closer to their muse, who allowed them to swim with her residents, including sharks, whales, dolphins, sea turtles, eels, and fish.

The sheer unearthliness of everything beneath the waves rocked the author's world, making it an empire that only the ocean could rule. The author wanted to know more and see more, but the desire for deep-sea submergence came with technical obstacles. The author felt the deep's pull, but limited to the ocean's top hundred feet, the real abyss eluded them, as if it were an abstraction rather than a destination. The author longed to explore the underwater world and see what it would be like to be there.

The deep ocean, which covers 65% of Earth's surface and occupies 95% of its living space, is a vast and mysterious area that has yet to be charted in detail. The epipelagic zone, which is the uppermost layer, is only 5% of the ocean's volume. The twilight zone, midnight zone, and abyssal zone are the deepest areas, with the Mariana Trench being the deepest.

The hadal zone, named after Hades, is the mystical realm of the dead, with waters starting at 20,000 feet and pitching down into dozens of ultradeep trenches and troughs. These deep waters are a shadow kingdom, with a mythical aura that can only be revealed through acoustic imaging or sonar. This technology allows for a refined three-dimensional model of the seafloor, but making precise bathymetric maps is a highly technical affair.

In 2017, the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 led to a curiosity about the abyss, as the Indian Ocean claimed it. The plane was thought to have gone down in the Indian Ocean's remote southern reaches, where gale winds rake across waters up to 30,000 feet deep. Satellite altimetry provided hints of the seafloor, but these models were more like estimates than facts. To pinpoint the jet's wreckage, better information was needed.

The largest, deepest, hardest, longest, and most technically ambitious deep-sea search ever conducted took 1,046 days and involved robots and high-resolution sonar. The search revealed the Southern Indian Ocean seafloor as a spectacularly beautiful symphony of extremes, akin to discovering Middleearth. The seabed was slashed with scars left by the supercontinent Gondwana when it broke into pieces, creating Australia, India, and Antarctica. A hundred million years ago, a volcanic rift in the seafloor opened up like a zipper, forming a 750-mile-long fracture zone. This led to the formation of the Diamantina Trench, a deep spot with soft sediment, marine snow, and a thriving population of unique species.