DIVE!

An overview of undersea venturing, from ancient sponge diving to explorations with modern submersibles.

Gall pairs a stodgy recitation of names and basic facts with cleanly drawn depictions of early diving suits and other gear down through the ages—beginning with hollow reeds used by ancient Greek divers and ending with an out-of-scale Alvin submarine cruising past the wreck of the Titanic. All are depicted being used or tested by a racially diverse cast of frozen-faced divers, inventors, and bridge construction workers. Along with livelier views of brightly colored sea life both real and fanciful, he also mixes in anatomical diagrams to illustrate the effects of pressure and compression. Throughout, Gall depicts a biracial family—oddly stony of mien, like the other humans—preparing for adventurous vacations, exploring a coral reef, and conducting simple science demonstrations. Both the evolving technology on display and the dramatic deep-sea settings and naturalistic flora and fauna are worth lingering over. But for readers seeking more vivid and detailed pictures of the dangers and discomforts of undersea exploration, Aly Brown’s The Last Unexplored Place on Earth (2023) makes a grand follow-up. A perfunctory list of information sources is appended, along with a warning about the hazards of climate-warming oceans and, less tangentially, general remarks on diver training and careers at the end.

Immersive visuals, weighed down by a leaden text.