The Diver & The Cook,
by Lasse Spang Olsen
I was reading The Diver & The Cook when a friend called on the phone. Within a few moments he had said: “I suppose you’ve read The Diver & The Cook?” That’s never happened to me before, which I suppose must mean that this is a “book of the moment”.
If you haven’t read it yet, you might just remember the news story from 2013 that inspired it, about a Nigerian tugboat that sank very rapidly in suspicious circumstances, trapping its 12 crew below decks.
When a team of saturation divers working in the area were called in to do what they are rarely expected to do – poke around inside a wreck in the 30m depth range to remove human bodies – they were shocked to find one of the crew, the galley chef, still alive after more than two days trapped in the remotest part of the vessel.
That isn’t a spoiler because this book is a “howdunnit”, tracing in detail what happened up to this point and, crucially, what happened next. It also has a couple of twists in the tail that certainly surprised me.
The author is a film-maker and this is the book of his documentary about an extraordinary underwater survival story, complete with original images from the claustrophobic confines of the hull.
He has set out the story very clearly, interspersed with sections of the original exchanges between the divers, their control ship and Harrison the cook, and this approach is very effective.
If I have a criticism – and it is very minor – it’s that for all his clarity the author seems so intent on making sure that the reader gets each and every point. This determination means that a certain amount of repetition creeps in.
This wears off after the first half of the book, however. By way of contrast, there is a later episode in which the rescue mission is almost derailed when the divers overlook a key consideration. This cliff-edge situation is resolved so quickly and suddenly that I found it difficult to picture quite how it happened – and still do.
None of this takes away from the fact that this is an exciting and emotional read, and Olsen has made it an easy one – although, as the final chapters make clear, it was far from easy for him to research and write. This breath-taking story is well worth the relatively short time it will take you to read.
Dived Up Publications, ISBN: 9781909455610
Paperback, 15x23cm, 176pp, £20
Coral Triangle Cameos: Biodiversity & The Small Majority,
by Alan J Powderham & Sancia ET van der Meij
It’s always difficult to guess what publisher Dived Up will come up with next but, as The Diver & The Cook indicates, its choices are never less than interesting.
I read the predecessor to Coral Triangle Cameos, which was called At The Heart Of The Coral Triangle, when it came out in 2021 and thought it was an excellent fusion of compelling text and underwater photography.
Alan Powderham is a very good macro photographer and, then as now, he had teamed up with marine biologist Sancia van der Meij to get beneath the skin of the “small majority” of tiny fish and invertebrates that make up the bulk of Indo-Pacific reef-life.
The previous book impressed to such an extent, especially the way in which it stuck to the scuba diver’s viewpoint, that we ran a six-page extract in Diver magazine to share the joy. Coral Triangle Cameos is produced in the same over-square coffee-table format and proves every bit as good.
I’ve read enough books in which photographers pick out their best shots and then come up with some specious chapter headings and waffly text to justify the choices, but Powderham and van der Miej are too conscientious to fall into this trap.
The pictures are chosen and grouped for good reason – in this case by animal types – and the words, though few, are carefully chosen nuggets of information that indicate original thought and leave the reader thinking they could be worth remembering.
Powderham’s images tend towards the dark side – he is one of those photographers who can resist the urge to make his pictures pop – and because they bleed to the edge of the pages and into each other the effect is to flood the reader’s field of view, as on a dive, making the experience more immersive.
I can’t say better of what is essentially a picture book than that this one would bear repeated reads. I reckon most observers of marine-life will enjoy it, and underwater photographers especially so.
Dived Up Publications, ISBN: 9781909455573
Hardback, 22x30cm, 224pp, £45
52 Assignments: Underwater Photography,
by Alex Mustard
52 Assignments is a series of books from Ammonite Press about facets of photography – last time I looked there were 14 titles, ranging in subject matter from black and white and drone to street and Instagram photography.
Now there is a dedicated underwater photography edition from no less eminent an authority than the UK’s own Alex Mustard, whose qualifications hardly need repeating.
Like the other titles in the series, Underwater Photography consists of a year’s worth of weekly workshop assignments “designed to build core skills, expand horizons and kickstart creativity”, not to mention produce knock-out images.
Assignments range from getting the perfect supermacro shot of life on the seabed to creative use of available light for moody photos of wrecks, and each one is accompanied by solid but not overly technical advice, with space for notes.
Each of the 52 assignments has a key showing the types of task involved, whether big animal, buddy, composition, computer, fish, lighting, macro, scenery, technique, wide-angle or wreck. The book is full of inspirational Mustard shots, tips panels and the sort of direct writing that ensures that his advice lands. The simple approach works to focus attention on key elements.
Some of the assignments cover initiatives such as entering competitions or producing magazine covershots (it’s good to see one of the author’s outstanding Diver covers used as an example of why so few images are actually able to stand up to the competition of multiple coverlines).
The problem that has no doubt occurred to you is that in the real world very few divers other than warmwater dive pros are lucky enough to have access to the variety of locations needed to fufil all these projects, certainly on a regular basis.
Mustard is clearly aware of this: “I have crafted assignments that can mostly be completed in a dive or a suitable diving day,” he says in the foreword. “They are intended to be completed roughly in order, rather than you cherry-picking your favourites.” So I reckon the message is to do the best you can.
For most underwater photographers serious about self-improvement, simply reading through this book will be an enjoyable process that leaves them with plenty of ideas to take on their next trip.
Ammonite Press, ISBN 9781781454893
Hardback, 21x14cm, 128pp, £12.99
Sharks, Rays & Chimaeras of the East Coast Of North America,
by David A Ebert & Marc Dando
This sumptuous field guide follows up on another I have reviewed in the past, when I observed that it was almost too beautifully produced to risk getting grubby and dog-eared in the field.
That 2020 guide was dedicated to Europe and the Mediterranean, and claimed to be the first field guide to cover all 146 species found in seas readily accessible from the UK. This new book covers the USA and Canada’s Atlantic seaboard and goes bigger than that with 173 species, naturally with considerable overlap.
It includes the elasmobranchs found around Atlantic islands such as the Bahamas and Bermuda, extending west into the Gulf of Mexico as far as the Yucatan Peninsula, and including some rarely seen deep-sea species.
Just to take lanternsharks as a random example, you’ll find a page of introduction with a colour photo, followed by three pages illustrating body shapes and markings, then a detailed dentition guide before we get into the nine species.
For each of these we have Dando’s better-than-photo lateral and aerial scientific illustrations, a detailed description, habitat, biology, IUCN Red List status, depth range, dimensions at various stages of maturity and other keyed details (the key is on the front cover flap), as well as distribution maps.
If you can’t pinpoint the preferred diet of a green lanternshark here, you probably never will.
David Ebert, programme director of the Pacific Shark Research Centre and holder of many other elasmobranch-related posts, writes with great clarity about each species between a number of more general chapters. There is also a chapter dedicated to conservation by Sonia Fordham of Shark Advocates International. This is one attractive and comprehensive reference book.
Princeton University Press, ISBN: 9780691206387
Hardback, 18x22cm, 430pp, £35
Diving Gozo & Comino,
by Richard Salter (2nd edition)
It might be a second edition but it’s worth noting because the Maltese islands are such a popular destination with British and continental divers, and there has long been fierce competition to serve them with definitive dive-guidebooks.
I believe this one was the first to ignore Malta itself and concentrate on the two northern islands. This makes sense because many diving visitors choose to base themselves on Gozo, and there is plenty to keep them occupied there.
Because the Maltese islands can be explored by independent shore-diving groups there has been more demand for guide-books than there might be in other destinations where the diving is mainly organised by dive-centres.
Salter’s book first appeared in 2017. He was well-placed as a local dive instructor with intimate working knowledge of the sites, and fleshed out the existing knowledge he would share with clients with further research and photography to fill in the gaps.
This revised edition contains only one new site, the wreck of the Hephaestus, bringing the total to 72 – most of which (58) are around Gozo.
For the record Hephaestus is a 60m oil tanker that was deliberately sunk between 30-40m deep at Xatt I-Ahmar, near existing attractions Karwela, Cominoland and Xlendi. The book, which contains detailed descriptions, maps and photographs, records changes to existing sites and updates information about the dive-centres.
The dramatic collapse of the Azure Window, turning it into a whole new dive-site after what was probably aeons, occurred just as the first edition had gone to press, but Dived Up had managed to pull the book back and amend it in the nick of time.
“It turns out that the map and write-up of the new site that Richard put together in the aftermath, once the vis had settled, largely held true,” publisher Alex Gibson tells me. The new edition contains a new Pete Bullen photo of the resulting ‘Azure Alps’ and a few further tweaks of the text. “Nothing so dramatic has occurred this time, thank goodness!”
As Gibson points out, the navigation and look of the book have been improved and refreshed, with the intention of making it easier to find dives in each of the five areas.
Dived Up Publications, ISBN 9781909455580
Paperback, 184pp, 23x16cm, £20
Sharkpedia: A Brief Compendium Of Sharklore,
by Daniel C Abel
Another shark offering from Princeton, this book could be seen at this time of year as a stocking-filler. It is also attractive in its own way, from its foil-stamped cloth cover on in. Illustrator Marc Dando is back with text-breaks in various line-drawing styles, but the concept revolves around the observations of Daniel Abel, a US marine science professor who specialises in shark ecology and physiology.
It’s a miscellany of sharky information split into some 100 alphabetical entries, and the good news is that it sidesteps the hackneyed verbiage about sharks being less of a threat to humans than humans are to sharks (yawn) in favour of the sort of stuff I didn’t know but wish I had.
Here is a taster, from a little section on weird shark names focusing on the Happy Eddie Shyshark: “Why is it a shy shark? Because, when it is threatened by predators like Cape Fur Seals, it has a habit of rolling into a ball with its tail covering its eyes. For that reason, the species is also called a Donut Shark.
“Maybe in doing so, the shark encourages the often playful Cape Fur Seals to engage in a game of ‘toss the shark’ rather than eating it.” You’ll have to read it to find out where the ’Happy Eddie’ bit comes from – or to relish other names such as the phallic shark and lollipop shark.
You’ll find interesting observations on aspects such as tonic immobility or “death feigning”; parental care: “There is none. Isn’t it virtuous enough that sharks do not eat their offspring?” and apple-bobbing as a way of understanding the shark bite.
This is far more than a jokey book but it does make what is at heart serious subject matter very digestible. A nice little gift for a shark-diver.
Princeton University Press, ISBN 9780691252612
Hardback, 12x18cm, 168pp, £10.99
The Little Book Of Whales,
by Robert Young & Annalisa Berta
One further “little book” from Princeton put me in mind in its hardcover format and style of the Observer series of books of my childhood. It is part of a series covering topics from beetles and butterflies to trees and weather, all of which might suggests children’s books but would be misleading because it’s simply aimed at nature-lovers.
Lavishly illustrated by Tugce Okay along with a selection of photographs, the pocket-sized book packs a lot of facts into its 160 small pages and is well-suited to travel. Personally, I would prefer a format more in keeping with its giant-size subject matter, especially in terms of illustrations, but the small print and design is easy enough to negotiate.
Like Sharkpedia, the book bobs about from topic to topic, covering biology, behaviour and conservation of dolphins and porpoises as well as the bigger whales, and is well-written and informative.
If you’re looking for a small gift for a cetacean-minded friend or relative, perhaps one who likes to take to the whale-watching boats while you’re out diving, this is well worth a thought.
Princeton University Press, ISBN 9780691260129
Hardback, 10x16cm, 160pp, £12.99
Other book reviews on Divernet: July 2024, November 2023, August 2023, April 2023, February 2023, December 2022, August 2022, April 2022
