Thalassa, thalassa!

The Sea! The Sea! The new contemplative me increasingly finds books with words in them too taxing... this was my favourite image in a 'Cube Book', called simply, The Sea, 700+ pages of photographs of the sea, its creatures, seasides, islands, sea-peoples. White Star Publishers put it out (£13.95). The photographers were largely Italian, the text is minimal, and so yes, it is a gift book which will have been marketed across Europe, while the deliberate attempt to make the over-fat book as much like a literal cube as possible means that the spine will not hold out forever. But it is full of vivid images, like a set of National Geographic magazines stripped of frenetic text. I've traduced the image above, by crudely cloning out the binding seam that runs up the opening, and the camera has played a trick, magnifying even a whale shark. A fisheye lens and refraction conspired together, but you will never see better captured that 'You never know what is down there' sensation even the calmest sea provokes.