A delightful A-to-Z menagerie of the sea—whimsically illustrated, authoritative, and thought-provoking.
 
For millennia, we have taken to the waves. And yet, for humans, the ocean remains our planet’s most inaccessible region, the place about which we know the least. From A to Z, abalone to zooplankton, and through both text and original illustrations, Ocean Bestiary is a celebration of our ongoing quest to know the sea and its creatures.
 
Focusing on individual species or groups of animals, Richard J. King embarks upon a global tour of ocean wildlife, including beluga whales, flying fish, green turtles, mako sharks, noddies, right whales, sea cows (as well as sea lions, sea otters, and sea pickles), skipjack tuna, swordfish, tropicbirds, walrus, and yellow-bellied sea snakes. But more than this, King connects the natural history of ocean animals to the experiences of people out at sea and along the world’s coastlines. From firsthand accounts passed down by the earliest Polynesian navigators to observations from Wampanoag clamshell artists, African-American whalemen, Korean female divers (or haenyeo), and today’s pilots of deep-sea submersibles—and even to imaginary sea expeditions launched through poems, novels, and paintings—Ocean Bestiary weaves together a diverse array of human voices underrepresented in environmental history to tell the larger story of our relationship with the sea. Sometimes funny, sometimes alarming, but always compelling, King’s vignettes reveal both how our perceptions of the sea have changed for the better and how far we still have to go on our voyage.

1 Introduction
World Map
Abalone
Architeuthis dux
Beluga
Chinstrap Penguin
Dolphinfish
Electric Ray
Flying Fish
Frigatebird
Grampus
Green Turtle
Guanay Cormorant
Halibut
Horse
Isurus oxyrinchus
Juan Fernández Crawfish
Killer Whale
Louisiana Shrimp
Mother Carey’s Chicken
New Zealand Sea Lion
Noddy
Octopus
Otter
Paper Nautilus
Parrot
Pilot Fish
Quahog
Right Whale
Sea Cow
Sea Pickle
Silver King
Teredo Shipworm
Tropicbird
Tuna
Urchin
Velella and the Man-of-War
Walrus
Wandering Albatross
Whale Shark
Xiphias gladius
Yellow-Bellied Sea Snake
Zooplankton
Acknowledgments
Selected Bibliography