Undersea Adventure

The Undersea Adventure is an exceptional book in that it is the work of a gifted author who sought adventure, rather than that of an adventurer who sought to write a book.

Here is Phillippe Diolé's thrilling discovery of an unexplored part of our planet, the world beneath the sea. From the intrepid "frogmen" of 480 B.C. to William Beebe's Bathysphere, from how to charm an octopus and scare a shark to sardines and whales, from our own prehistoric origins to the present offshore oil controversy, there are but a few of the topics covered in this book.

While taking the reader along on some of his exciting undersea explorations, Mr. Diolé offers an absorbing running commentary on well-nigh all that goes on beneath the surface of the sea. Readers will delight in his description of the beautiful slow ceremonial ballet which starts off the marriage ceremony of the hippocampi, or sea-horses; they will share the author's exhilarating experience in discovering a number of amphoras on a sunken Roman galley which contained Campagna wine in a fine state of preservation, and other archaeological findings ranking in importance with many found in Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley.

Yet all this is only one aspect of The Undersea Adventure. For ever since he took up his undersea excursions, the author has found in the sea a limitless field of activity, from which he has drawn the deep sense of intellectual and philosophical satisfaction which he so admirably communicates to the reader. As a result, this book, while the record of an exciting personal adventure, has much of the quality and spirit of Saint-Exupéry, writing of his experiences in another domain—the air.