Non-fiction.  Sylvia Earle is one of the women pioneers in diving, a marine biologist and a diver since 1952. She talks about our living in an age of pivotal significance regarding the decisions we make for the world’s ocean. We have gone from a ocean of unlimited bounty to polluted seas and declining fisheries in a few short decades.  A thoughtful book to rival Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

Sea Change: A Message of the Oceans

Non-fiction, Out of Print.  Alvin is one of the most famous exploration vehicles in the world, the Apollo of the underwater world. Water Baby tells the fascinating story of the submersible that found the H-bomb off Palomares, Spain, discovered the strange communities of the deep Atlantic Ridge geothermal vents, and located the legendary R.M.S. Titanic, lost since 1912.

Non-fiction, Out of Print.  Many people have forgotten that in 1960 we sent men down in the USN Trieste to the Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in all the world’s oceans. A deep hole in the Mariana Trench in the Phillipines, the Challenger Deep was discovered by HMS Challenger southwest of Guam in 1951. The pressure on the steel ball holding Jacques Piccard and Lt. Don Walsh, USN was nearly 200,000 tons!

Non-fiction.  A stunning tale of the discovery of the California gold ship, the SS Central America, by Tommy Thompson and the Columbus-America Discovery Group.  Stories of the passengers of the Central America are interwoven with Tommy’s efforts to locate the ship and retrieve the artifacts. A “can’t put it down” book.

Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea

Non-fiction.  Robert Ballard documents a personal history of deep-sea exploration in the Eternal Darkness, beginning with William Beebe’s plunge into the depths (see Half Mile Down) and continuing through Trieste’s descent into the Challenger Deep (see Seven Miles Down) to modern times, including his discovery of the R.M.S. Titanic (see Water Baby).

The Eternal Darkness: A Personal History of Deep-Sea Exploration  

Non-fiction, Out of Print.  While this book is out of print, it is a classic in the annals of ocean exploration.  Crawl into an iron ball less than 5 feet in diameter? No way!  In 1934, sponsored by the New York Zoological Society, William Beebe plunged to 3028 feet in that iron ball, dubbed a bathysphere, to see life never witnessed before by man at those depths.