32 THE AY UPDlU BOING Uli eles 
“During the winter, the white wilderness of the North seems like a 
planet where life has not yet appeared. It has the same pre-historic ele- 
ments: snow, ice, and the sky. For hundreds of miles, nothing else can be 
glimpsed ... When the snow is on it, much of the arctic land, as well as 
the silent and motionless sea, might belong to the earth’s beginnings.” 
Miss Carrighar describes a moment in the life of a fox, a walrus, a 
fawn and other animals. The tale of the humpback whale is one of the 
most tender in the book. 
—Raymond Mostek 
LIFE AND DEATH IN A CORAL SEA By Jacques-Yves Cousteau 
with Phillipe Diole. Translated from the French by J. F. Bernard. 
Doubleday & Co., Garden City, 1971. $8.95. 302 pages. 122 color and 20 
black and white photographs. 20 line drawings. 
Every mature person is impressed with the enormous accomplishments of 
the U.S. and Russian space teams. Billions of dollars and scientific genius 
have enabled man to reach the moon. Perhaps it is time to ask if we are 
prepared to expend the same energy and treasure to save the vast oceans 
of the earth. 
On this mission, the assignment given to Cousteau and his talented 
crew was to study and photograph the complex coral areas of the Red Sea 
and the Indian Ocean, primarily the region around the fabled Maldive 
Islands, Madagascar, Europa Island, and the archipelagos around Massawa. 
He succeeds admirably in this exquisite volume with some of the most 
handsome pictures of underwater life to be found anywhere. 
Cousteau has operated his vessel “Calypso” for almost two decades, 
exploring the vast unknown life forms beneath the sea. He has become 
well-known to millions through his television productions. The voyages 
are financed in part through those films, plus royalties on books, and per- 
sonal lectures. He writes with the restrained pen of a man with a huge 
respect for the elements, for the sea, and for mechanical things in general. 
One line reveals it all when he writes in the midst of a forthcoming cyclone 
in the Red Sea ... “the starboard propeller shaft broke, and our prospects 
were not very bright.” 
Cousteau made his first dive 25 years ago to 150 and 175 feet. He is a 
co-inventor of the aqua-lung and other underwater devices. The remarks 
and compliments he pays to many of his crew are rewarding, for they all 
appear to be remarkable men, skilled in several fields and all deeply in 
love with the sea. 
References to sharks are almost everywhere, and though his divers 
have not had very serious problems with them, the crew has a healthy 
respect for this most dangerous killer of the sea. Some of Cousteau’s words 
on sharks are worth repeating: ‘Sharks seldom sleep. Most of them never 
sleep, so far as we know. And a few large ones, attracted no doubt by 
our lights, swam cut of the darkness to join us. There was no way to get 
rid of them. Sharks, because of their sensory cells, scattered over their 
bodies (and especially on their heads) in large numbers, are better equipped 
than the diver to operate in dark waters. That is not to say that sharks 
have ‘night vision.’ They see no better than we do at night. But they have 
senses, cther than sight, that we lack, and these senses allow them to know 
what is going on in the water at night.” 
