The Ocean's Menagerie

The ocean is where all life began, four billion years ago, but as humans we only ever get to glimpse a fraction of it. Luckily the marine biologist Drew Harvell has donned her scuba gear and met some remarkable marine creatures — and she tells us about their fascinating lives in this book * The Times, Best Books of 2025 so far *Thank goodness for marine biologists such as Drew Harvell to take us on undersea safaris … In The Ocean’s Menagerie she [Harvell] dons her scuba gear so we don’t have to, and recounts a lifetime of experience meeting the remarkable marine creatures that almost nobody else will ever get to see… [An] enchanting book – Henry Gee * The Times, Book of the Week *Harvell … reveal[s] some of the exceptional attributes of … underwater marvels * Financial Times, Books to Look Out For 2025 *[A] fascinating new book… [Harvell] writes vividly and with tangible delight about this strange world, zooming in on a series of the most striking of these animals * Spectator *In this enchanting book she [Harvell] uses the complex histories of eight underwater creatures to showcase the mind-boggling variety of marine life * Sunday Times, Summer Reads of 2025 *A vividly revelatory exploration of a more ancient biological universe, adjacent yet largely invisible to our own and offering countless benefits to humanity’s future – William Gibson, author of AgencyA love letter to the ocean, and its weird and wonderful creatures, from an eminent explorer and marine biologist. Each page is full of wonder and surprise, and in every tale of a shape-shifting octopus or luminous jellyfish, we are reminded why the ocean is worth conserving – Steve Brusatte, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the DinosaursThe Ocean’s Menagerie is a marine smorgasbord of the spineless … What Harvell has discovered is magic and bewildering, astonishing creatures that challenge our idea of animalhood and pull off biological tricks that transform our landlubber lives. This will make you look again at the marine lives around you … The exquisite and strange inventions marine invertebrates have evolved are surprising and wonderful – Tom Mustill, author of How To Speak WhaleCreatures without backbones are more than 99 percent of our planet’s animal species. Ocean invertebrates have billions of years of experience living, changing and proliferating into an astonishing array of shapes, sizes, and ways of living. They’re more diversely weirder — and more mysterious — than big, bony, familiar animals. Drew Harvell has explored, thought deeply about, seen deeply into, and actually lived in the ocean. The ocean’s life is woven into her own. She is deeply in love with her amazing subjects. And a few pages into this warm and wondrous book, you will be too – Carl Safina, New York Times bestselling author of Beyond WordsDr. Drew brings us a magnificent stable of marine critters, so beautiful as to be almost art, so astonishing in their lifestyles as to be almost superheroes. She delivers smooth prose like the incoming tide, building a depth of feeling and flow of discoveries to let us see, underneath every wave and in every sea, how thrillingly complex and stunningly lovely ocean wildlife can be – Stephen Palumbi, author of The Extreme Life of the SeaEveryone lives on Planet Ocean, but not everyone has a front row seat to see what makes it so wonderful. Drew Harvell is the teacher you want to reveal the intricate mysteries that make up most life in the sea. The Ocean’s Menagerie has unforgettable lessons that mix science, wonder, and a deep love for life beneath the water’s edge – Nick Pyenson, author of Spying on WhalesIn an underwater world of sea pens and comb jellies, where stony lettuce corals do battle with purple gorgonians, Drew Harvell is the perfect guide, companion, and translator. She writes with undiminished wonder about creatures she has spent a lifetime studying, filling The Ocean’s Menagerie with astonishing science and storytelling. A book of marvels – Thor Hanson, author of Close to HomeHarvell’s tour of wondrous animals … shows how climate change threatens their existence. We need to conserve this ‘menagerie’ – not least to unsure the survival of our own species * Nature *The strange creatures of the deep ocean are endlessly fascinating, and Drew Harvell’s fascinating exploration of the depths (sorry) of their wondrousness is as gripping as you’d hope * LitHub *

Drew Harvell is Professor Emerita of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University. She is the author of Ocean Outbreak and A Sea of Glass, which were, variously, the winner of the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature, recipient of the Rachel Carson Environmental Literature Award, one of the year’s best ‘Art Meets Science’ books by Smithsonian Magazine, Prose Award winner in Biological Sciences from the Association of American Publishers, and recipient of the Ecological Society of America Sustainability Science Award.

She has written for the New York Times, Seattle Times, The Hill, and CNN, and her work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Scientific American, Nature, and more. She also featured in the award-winning film, Fragile Legacy, and is currently a science adviser for Fabian Cousteau’s Underwater Space Station.