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Big Pacific: Photos from One of Earth's Great Oceans

A new book captures the shocking, surprising and stunning life within the Pacific

The Chambered nautilus has only primitive eyes without any cornea or lens. It is thought that it relies primarily on its sense of smell to detect prey, and on its sense of touch to detect obstacles in the water. It eats small crustaceans and fish and also scavenges on dead animals. Its many-chambered shell—as many as 30—is the secret of its ability to stay upright and control its buoyancy, which is does by releasing gas through a tube that runs through the center of the chambers.

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Excerpted from BIG PACIFIC by Rebecca Tansley. Concept and photographs © Natural History New Zealand Ltd., 2017. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press and David Bateman Ltd. 


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The Pacific Ocean covers one-third of earth’s surface and contains nearly half of the planet’s water. The following slideshow features a selection of images from a new book, Big Pacific, published this week that captures the varied and unique environments and inhabitants of the Pacific Ocean—from maco sharks and underwater iguanas, to glowing squid and poisonous lionfish. A 5-part series by the same name airs on PBS beginning this week.

Andrea Gawrylewski is chief newsletter editor at Scientific American. She writes the daily Today in Science newsletter and oversees all other newsletters at the magazine. In addition, she manages all special collector's editions and in the past was the editor for Scientific American Mind, Scientific American Space & Physics and Scientific American Health & Medicine. Gawrylewski got her start in journalism at the Scientist magazine, where she was a features writer and editor for "hot" research papers in the life sciences. She spent more than six years in educational publishing, editing books for higher education in biology, environmental science and nutrition. She holds a master's degree in earth science and a master's degree in journalism, both from Columbia University, home of the Pulitzer Prize.

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