biography/memoir

Below the Edge of Darkness

A pioneering marine biologist takes us down into the deep ocean to understand bioluminescence—the language of light that helps life communicate in the darkness in this “thrilling blend of hard science and high adventure” (The NY Times Book Review). 

Widder’s childhood dream of becoming a marine biologist was almost derailed in college, when complications from surgery caused temporary blindness. A new reality of shifting shadows drew her fascination to the power of light—as well as the importance of optimism. 

As her vision cleared, Widder found the intersection of her two passions in oceanic bioluminescence, a little-explored scientific field within Earth’s last great unknown frontier: the deep ocean. With little promise of funding or employment, she leaped at the first opportunity to train as a submersible pilot and dove into the darkness. 

Widder’s 1st journey into the deep, in a diving suit that resembled a suit of armor, took her to down to 800 feet. Turning off the lights, she witnessed breathtaking underwater fireworks: explosions of bioluminescent activity. Concerns about her future career vanished. She only wanted to know: “Why was there so much light down there?” 

Below the Edge of Darkness takes readers deep into our planet’s oceans as Widder pursues her questions about one of the most important and widely used forms of communication in nature. In the process, she reveals hidden worlds and a dazzling menagerie of behaviors and animals, from microbes to leviathans, many never before seen. Alongside Widder, we experience life-and-death equipment malfunctions and witness breakthroughs in technology and understanding, all set against a growing awareness of the deteriorating health of our largest and least understood ecosystem. 

A thrilling adventure story as well as a scientific revelation, Below the Edge of Darkness reckons with the complicated and sometimes dangerous realities of exploration. Widder shows us how when we push our boundaries, discovery and wonder follow.

“Edith Widder’s story is one of hardscrabble optimism, two-fisted exploration, and groundbreaking research. She’s done things I dream of doing.” —James Cameron

(A special thank you to Neal Klemens for the suggestion.)

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Into the Deepest and Darkest

Ever wondered what it's like to dive to 100 meters, to be waiting alone in the dark, your only way back to safety a thin nylon line snaking away from you, up and up and up into the darkness and down and down and down into the blackness? Not a sound but your own breathing. Minutes ticking away. How long you can wait for your friend?

This book tells the story of more than 12 years of extreme deep cave diving, culminating in the setting of four Guinness Book of records for deep diving around the world.

From the foreword: “14 minutes to descend, 31 decompression stops to look forward to. My first decompression stop was at 190 metres. My first support diver only met me at 120 metres. I had to endure 12 hours and 20 minutes of decompression in rough seas. In the end, I had done something no one else ever had. I’d dived to 321.85 metres on open circuit scuba and returned to tell the tale. In the process, I’d breathed 90,000 litres of gas and had 15 backup divers working in relays to support me. This is the incredible place that over 12 years of ever deeper cave diving and exploration had brought me and my dedicated support team.

I have seen the author of this book go from a novice open water diver to become one of the most experienced technical diving instructors in South Africa. Joseph Emmanuel was with me for almost all my record breaking dives over the years. This book is his personal account of those expeditions. The book is about more than just diving. It’s about trust, and friendship, and faith in other people’s ability. It’s about determination to see a goal achieved. It’s about relationships and communication, logistics and planning. It’s about a journey that began more than 10 years ago and a destination that as explorers we will never really reach.” —Nuno Gomes, holder of two world records in deep diving including the cave diving record from 1996 to the present

(A special thank you to Matthew David for the book suggestion.)

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Coming Back Alive

When the fishing vessel La Conte sinks suddenly at night in 100mph winds and record 90ft seas during a savage storm in January 1998, her five crewmen are left to drift without a life raft in the freezing Alaskan waters and survive as best they can.

150 miles away, in Sitka, Alaska, an H-60 Jayhawk helicopter lifts off from America's most remote Coast Guard base in the hopes of tracking down an anonymous Mayday signal. A fisherman's worst nightmare has become a Coast Guard crew's desperate mission. As the crew of the La Conte begin to die one by one, those sworn to watch over them risk everything to pull off the rescue of the century.

Spike Walker has been hailed by James A. Michener as “masterful.” In Coming Back Alive, Walker has crafted his most devastating book to date. Meticulously researched through hundreds of hours of taped interviews with the survivors, this is the true account of the La Conte's final voyage and the relationship between Alaskan fishermen and the search and rescue crews who risk their lives to save them.

“Coming Back Alive is everything the genre demands: exciting, harrowing, and maddeningly suspenseful.” —Portland Oregonian

“Reminiscent of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm and Frederic Stonehouse's The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Highly recommended!” —Library Journal

“Junger intrigues you, Greenlaw enlightens you. Walker will scare you half to death...Walker describes seven of the most intense hours I have read about.” —National Fisherman's Journal

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The Last Dive

Spurred on by a fatal combination of obsession and ambition, Chris and Chrisy Rouse, an experienced father-son scuba diving team, hoped to achieve wide-spread recognition for their outstanding and controversial diving skills by solving the secrets of a mysterious, undocumented, WWII German U-boat that lay only a half day’s mission from New York Harbor.

The Rouses found the ultimate cost of chasing their personal challenge: death from what divers dread the most—decompression sickness, or “the bends.” In this gripping recounting of their tragedy, author Bernie Chowdhury, himself an expert diver, explores the thrill-seeking, high-risk world of deep sea diving, its legendary figures, most celebrated triumphs, and notorious tragedies.

Written by Sea Gypsy Bernie Chowdhury, a technical diver who was also a close friend of the Rouses. This is a heart-stopping read about local diving that’s not to be missed.

“Superbly written and action-packed, The Last Dive ranks with such adventure classics as The Perfect Storm and Into Thin Air.” —Tampa Tribune

“A suspenseful tale [that] amounts to one long nail-biter...will leave even surface-dwellers gasping for air.” — Philadelphia Enquirer

(A special thank you to Lisa McIntyre for the book suggestion.)

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Bending Atmospheres

A memoir of a young man’s dream of space flight and deep diving, Bending Atmospheres is a dazzling adventure recounting daring, heroic professionals learning to work at undersea pressures to 1,000 feet sea water and in the vacuum of orbital space traveling at 18,000 miles an hour. Readers are taken through the early development of deep diving tri-mix, nitrox and neon diving gas mixtures and decompression tables, to early diving in the treacherous North Sea, National Geographic expeditions seeking famed sunken treasure, and methods used to train astronauts for space walks to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

“Bold, daring, exciting adventures—fraught with danger befitting James Bond—are at the heart of this valuable contribution to the literature of how humans developed techniques, protocols, and different breathing gas mixtures for survival, working, and exploration in both the deep sea and space environment by one of the men directly involved in those developments.” —Bernie Chowdhury, noted author of The Last Dive

“If you are in the diving world Bending Atmospheres is a MUST-READ book. If you are a technical diver, it is even more of a must-read. Everything we do today in advanced and technical diving is because of Glenn Butler, Dr. Bill Hamilton, Dave Kenyon, and Hans Schreiner. For Glenn to put this incredible story to print makes is all the more special.” —Joel Silverstein, Diving Technologist

“This is an engrossing story about discovery, adventure success and failure from the man who personally experienced the events. The way that the narrative is constructed from snippets from from the author's past interwoven with more contemporary events is interesting and gives a window on his past as well as his work in the present. I recommend the book to anyone who has an interest in deep sea diving, space exploration and hyperbaric therapies.” —D Bertels

”Extremely entertaining and refreshingly personal, highly recommended!” —Susan Joiner

“The cast of charters that Glenn worked with, the included technical information, and how technology developed for underwater gets used in the space program is an intriguing story. Very few people know this part of history. I could not put this riveting book down.” —Larry Cohen

(A special thank you to Glenn Butler for the suggestion.)

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Life and Adventures of Frances Namon Sorcho

Published in 1888, this 24-page “little book” written by Captain Louis Sorcho of the Great Deep Sea Diving Company provides a peek into the life and adventures of the “Only Woman Deep Sea Diver in the World.”

Excerpt: ”To the average individual unacquainted with the art of deep sea diving and the mysteries of the ocean away down beneath its surface, divers are sort of superhuman creatures often read about but seldom seen. How they exist in the ocean's depths, the queer costume they are compelled to wear, the strange sensations they experience, the wonderful sights they see, the desperate risks they take, and the manner in which they work beneath the water, have, heretofore, all been a sealed volume to the general public.

In presenting this little book to our patrons, it is our object to enlighten them on these subjects, and give them some idea, at least, of the life of a diver.

See here a woman, who has braved the thousand deaths that await the diver; who has calmly, yet courageously, ventured in the ocean's depth, with only the fishes and the thousands awaiting the day when the sea shall give up its dead for companions; kept herself in perfect control and invaded the mystic depths as a conqueror, mistress alike of element and herself.

Mrs. Sorcho is the only woman deep sea diver in the world, and is the only woman alive today who has ever donned a submarine armor and descended into the ocean's depths to work.”

(A special thank you to Neal Klemens for the book suggestion.)

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Into the Planet

From one of the world’s most renowned cave divers, a firsthand account of exploring the earth’s final frontier: the hidden depths of our oceans and the sunken caves inside our planet

More people have died exploring underwater caves than climbing Mount Everest, and we know more about deep space than we do about the depths of our oceans. From one of the top cave divers working today—and one of the very few women in her field—Into the Planet blends science, adventure, and memoir to bring readers face-to-face with the terror and beauty of earth’s remaining unknowns and the extremes of human capability.

Jill Heinerth—the first person in history to dive deep into an Antarctic iceberg and leader of a team that discovered the ancient watery remains of Mayan civilizations—has descended farther into the inner depths of our planet than any other woman. She takes us into the harrowing split-second decisions that determine whether a diver makes it back to safety, the prejudices that prevent women from pursuing careers underwater, and her endeavor to recover a fallen friend’s body from the confines of a cave. But there’s beauty beyond the danger of diving, and while Heinerth swims beneath our feet in the lifeblood of our planet, she works with biologists discovering new species, physicists tracking climate change, and hydrogeologists examining our finite freshwater reserves.

Written with hair-raising intensity, Into the Planet is the first book to deliver an intimate account of cave diving, transporting readers deep into inner space, where fear must be reconciled and a mission’s success balances between knowing one’s limits and pushing the envelope of human endurance.

“Breathtaking . . . Written in cinematic detail, Into the Planet is a thrilling portrait of bravery, innovation, and the extreme limits of human capability. . . . one of the most hair-raising accounts of extreme exploration I’ve read in recent memory.” —Gizmodo

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Descent into Darkness

On December 7, 1941, as the great battleships Arizona, Oklahoma, and Utah lie paralyzed and burning in the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a crack team of U.S. Navy salvage divers headed by Edward C. Raymer are hurriedly flown to Oahu from the mainland. The divers have been given a Herculean task: rescue the sailors and Marines trapped below, and resurrect the pride of the Pacific fleet.

Now for the first time, the chief diver of the Pearl Harbor salvage operations, Cmdr. Edward C. Raymer, USN (Ret.), tells the whole story of the desperate attempts to save crewmembers caught inside their sinking ships. Descent into Darkness is the only book available that describes the raising and salvage operations of sunken battleships following the December 7th attack.

Once Raymer and his crew of divers entered the interiors of the sunken shipwrecks—attempting untested and potentially deadly diving techniques—they experienced a world of total blackness, unable to see even the faceplates of their helmets. By memorizing the ships’ blueprints and using their sense of touch, the divers groped their way hundreds of feet inside the sunken vessels to make repairs and salvage vital war material. The divers learned how to cope with such unseen dangers as falling objects, sharks, the eerie presence of floating human bodies, and the constant threat of Japanese attacks from above.

Though many of these divers were killed or seriously injured during the wartime salvage operations, on the whole they had great success performing what seemed to be impossible jobs. Among their credits, Raymer’s crew raised the sunken battleships West Virginia, Nevada, and California. After Pearl Harbor, they moved on to other crucial salvage work off Guadalcanal and the sites of other great sea battles.

“The book sucks you into the nightmare conditions of diving on battleships so large that even the crew got lost when the ships were upright, never mind when they sank upside down. Vast quantities of leaking fuel and oil in the water rendered lights useless, so salvagers dove in total darkness. With visibility of two inches or less, they worked by touch alone. The ingenuity and courage of these Navy men, groping their way through an ink-black maze of war-wrecked ships and floating bodies will leave readers astounded.” —Beth McCrea, Scuba Diver Life

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