Author's Note

“You thought I should find nothing but ooze … and I’ve discovered a new world!”

H. G. Wells, Into the Abyss

IN 2001, when the first edition of Creatures of the Deep was published, I wrote that we were embarking on a great century of discovery in the deep ocean. That prediction is on course. In 2007, fishermen off New Zealand hauled to the surface the largest colossal squid ever seen by humans (though still never observed alive in its natural habitat). In 2010, researchers reported on the Census of Marine Life, a decade-long investigation into life in the oceans that described some 6,000 potential new species, mainly in the deep sea. Soon after that announcement, scientists raised the estimated number of oceanic species named and known to science from 220,000 to 240,000, an increase of 20,000 new species that make their homes in the sea. Thanks to an expedition that launched from Japan in June 2012, we were able to watch the first video of a living giant squid in the wild. Also in 2012, after a gap of 50 years, we shared the excitement of the second manned visit to the deepest spot in the ocean—Challenger Deep, at the southern end of the Mariana Trench—undertaken by filmmaker James Cameron. 

There’s much, much more. For example, in 2006, on the North Icelandic Shelf near Grímsey Island on the Arctic Circle, researchers from Bangor University in Wales dredged up what they took to be 400-year-old specimens of the clam Arctica islandica. The age of one of the clams was subsequently determined to be 507 years, which was confirmed by carbon dating. The longest-lived noncolonial animal with an accurately determined life span, this clam was named Ming, a tribute to the fact that it had started life during the Chinese Ming Dynasty. While there is no way of knowing just how much longer Ming might have lived had the clam been left on the ocean floor, its discovery does lead us to wonder what secrets to a long and happy life are to be found in the cold waters north of Iceland.