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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description

Learning marine biology from a textbook is one thing. But take readers to the bottom of the sea in a submarine to discover living fossils or to coral reefs to observe a day in the life of an octopus, and the sea and its splendors come into focus, in brilliant colors and with immediacy.

In Sensuous Seas, Eugene Kaplan offers readers an irresistibly irreverent voyage to the world of sea creatures, with a look at their habitats, their beauty and, yes, even their sex lives. A marine biologist who has built fish farms in Africa and established a marine laboratory in Jamaica, Kaplan takes us to oceans across the world to experience the lives of their inhabitants, from the horribly grotesque to the exquisitely beautiful. In chapters with titles such as "Fiddler on the Root" (reproductive rituals of fiddler crabs) and "Size Does Count" (why barnacles have the largest penis, comparatively, in the animal kingdom), Kaplan ventures inside coral reefs to study mating parrotfish; dives 740 feet in a submarine to find living fossils; explains what results from swallowing a piece of living octopus tentacle; and describes a shark attack on a friend.

The book is a sensuous blend of sparkling prose and 150 beautiful illustrations that clarify the science. Each chapter opens with an exciting personal anecdote that leads into the scientific exploration of a distinct inhabitant of the sea world--allowing the reader to experience firsthand the incredible complexity of sea life.

A one-of-a-kind memoir that unfolds in remarkable reaches of ocean few of us can ever visit for ourselves, Sensuous Seas brings the underwater world back to living room and classroom alike. Readers will be surprised at how much marine biology they have learned while being amused.

Customer Reviews:

1 out of 5 stars

Not sure who this book is meant for June 11, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

This book is a neat attempt at capturing some of the urban legends of marine biology as well as some of the other interesting marine minutae, spiced up with a tone of irreverence. While this is a noble goal, I would be very wary of giving this book to anyone untrained in marine biology who is beginning to become interested in the topic. For starters it is often factually inaccurate. Granted, Kaplan may be unaware of some of the advances in knowledge in the last decade, but some of the anecdotes and stories presented as truth are more urban legend than fact. In addition to needing a good editor (some of the chapters are nearly incoherent) it also needs a good fact checker.

Moreover, the general tone taken towards nature and science is one of freewheeling fun rather than a desire for respect or understanding. While the author may feel that attempts to understand the elegant and wonderful mechanisms underlying the sea are stuffy and boring, there is something to be said for having students go out into the field and make observations, design experiments, and really LOOK at nature, rather than have them attempt to grab fish, gobble down octopus tentacles, and generally tromp around merely creating lists of species.

Further, while Kaplan may have been trying to come across and amusing by sexing things up a bit (there is some truth in that this approach can grab students), it often quickly descends into the kind of almost unconscious sexism that is so often criticized in the sciences. I would NOT give this book to a young girl or woman aspiring to be a marine biologist, as it is certain to give her the wrong kind of message about the kinds of people in the field and the treatment she is to expect.

There are a variety of excellent popular books out there about the ocean, marine biologists (Log of the Sea of Cortez, Nature's Machines, etc.), and the crazy sex lives of animals (Dr. Tatiana's Sex Guide to All Creation). This is not one of them. I would recommend the aforementioned books, or any of the other excellent books or DVDs (The Blue Planet) about the underwater world and science and give this a pass.

5 out of 5 stars

Is there a marine biologist in the house? November 10, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

When I heard that Kaplan had written a book, I wondered if the man could be captured by the printed page. No problem. His book immediately took me back to his wonderful marine biology class in Jamaica. His stories were always fascinating, and I am happy to see them recorded here. The reader can appreciate that he is a character and a wonderful educator. His knowledge has also inspired many to continue their studies of the conplexities found in the sea. Everyone interested in marine biology should read this book. There are so many surprises. Beautiful drawings.

3 out of 5 stars

Sex facts for 'sea' students except one bad chapter November 3, 2006
1 out of 10 found this review helpful

Even if you already spend some time in the water and know something about the life there, Eugene Kaplan's essays about being a teacher will likely tell you something you didn't know -- or something you knew that isn't so.
For example, in "Debunking the Big Lie," Kaplan explains that the starfish does not "win" his battle with the oyster by tiring it out, so that the protective shells gape.
"All of this is a misrepresentation perpetrated on generations of students," writes Kaplan, who teaches at Hofstra University and at its marine laboratory in Jamaica.
It turns out, "it is unnecessary to pull the shells apart. <\q>.<\q>.<\q.> Invariably there is a fissure," through which the sea star squeezes its stomach, digesting the oyster within.
However, most of the lore in "Sensuous Seas" is about sex, rather like an underwater version of Olivia Judson's best-seller on evolution, "Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation."
Kaplan says he was driven to sex up his lectures in order to keep the attention of students. He was able to get away with this because most of them were invertebrates -- the sea creatures, not the students.
He is also big on field experience, and being one of his students must have been lots of fun and a little scary.
The late Sen. William Proxmire would have scorned the research into the mating behavior of the Malaysian prawn, but you never can tell. Hawaii aquaculturalists would have saved a lot of money had they known earlier why Malaysian prawns are impossible to raise to market size in captivity -- the dominant male in a tank exudes pheromones that keep all the others small. The fact that shoyu is an aphrodisiac for these prawns, once thought to be a breakthrough piece of aquacultural expertise, is now just a curiosity.
Wrapping up a half century of teaching and 31 fascinating chapters on the ocean's inhabitants (including the timely topic of stingray deaths), Kaplan reflects on the pedagogy of introducing complex subjects to naive students. "There is a conflict in the mind of every teacher as to how much 'knowledge' must be sacrificed in order to make a course interesting," he writes.
Unfortunately, Kaplan lets his alarmism get the better of him in this conflict in his chapter on corals. Corals are the "canaries in the coal mine," he assures us, warning that "global warming does exist" and that "present-day oceans average 2 degrees C. above past normal temperatures."
In a book aimed at naive readers, this comes close to professional malpractice.
First, there is no such thing as "past normal temperatures." Second, corals have hung around for hundreds of millions of years, most of them warmer than now.
Third, there is no scientific agreed measurement for coral bleaching, the signal "of the impending doom of many of the earth's less flexible organisms."
"Be forewarned," warns Kaplan. Yeah. That's still globaloney, no matter how you slice it.

5 out of 5 stars

Sensuous Seas: Prawnography at its best? August 16, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

If Miss Jean Brodie was a marine biologist she would, after reading the first page, dismiss this book with its discussion of the attributes of 'Miss Nubile' and hormone laden young men as soft porn. In doing so she would miss out on a distillation of over 30 years experience from a committed, slightly eccentric educationalist and respected academic with a passion for tropical marine ecology. For anyone teaching biology or marine science this engagingly written book is a marvellous toolbox of anecdotes and examples that will stimulate even the most cynical of students.

Each chapter follows a roughly similar pattern with a lyrical initial paragraph and an anecdotal introduction to set the scene followed by a series of easily digestible sections on the same theme. The subject matter for each section, drawn from his years of experience on the field, ranges from the dangers of eating fugu (puffer fish) through to the disproportionate size of the humble barnacles penis. Through a colourful and often humorous approach to each topic, the reader is given a toe-hold grasp of some fairly chewy areas of biology (e.g. honest signalling, evolution, symbiosis, behaviour).

I showed this book to my mother-in-law (not a biologist) who was impressed by the ease with which she could understand the subjects and concepts explored. Having had her interest stimulated by the book she proceeded to bombard me with more questions - how I wish my own students would react similarly to my delivery! I will be using much of the material presented in Sensuous Seas to spice up my own lectures to marine biology undergraduates but this book will also be of interest to armchair and amateur field naturalists.

5 out of 5 stars

It's a strange world under the surface August 13, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

From the bizarre to the macabre, nature's ingenuity knows only the bounds of evolutionary advantage.

A small, appetizing, cleaner fish waves to big, passing predators "advertising its services." The savage behemoth approaches, assumes an unthreatening stance and is cleaned of parasites by the smaller creature.

The Portuguese man `o war fish lives safe from its enemies among the poisonous tentacles of its namesake gasbag jellyfish ("no brain, no blood, no heart, no anus"). But the fish, which must dart out to feed, has never evolved an immunity to the man `o war's paralyzing venom other than its own agility.

Clownfish (remember Nemo?) mate for life and live among the poisonous tentacles of the sea anemone, paying for their safe refuge by feeding the anemone. "If the female dies, the male becomes a female and a new male joins her."

Sex change is pretty common in this eat and be eaten world. Even more efficient are the hermaphrodites, like the sea hares, who have both male and female equipment and mate in group circles.

A biologist with a half-century's experience, a professor and the author of nine books, Kaplan introduces each animal in this collection of essays on the mating and feeding habits of sea creatures with an anecdotal encounter. Many involve personal experience, often with his students, who quickly learn that the most flamboyantly colorful are often the most dangerous, like the red and white fringed fireworm which has hundreds of pretty poison barbs.

But few of these, not even the blue-ringed octopus whose bite kills in minutes, compare in horror with a small Amazonian catfish who swims up a human's urinary tract, extends its spines for secure placement and begins rapidly tearing at and consuming its victim's innards.

However, for pure unadulterated cruelty as a way of life nothing (at least in this book) matches a tiny, free-swimming barnacle larvae that takes up residence in a crab, turns it into a female if it happens to be male, consumes all flesh and organs not required to keep the crab alive, and then fills in the newly vacated space with its own tissue. The barnacle then extrudes sexual organs, which attract a couple of males who also take up residence in the crab. Thereafter, "endless hordes of larvae are released periodically" from the hapless host.

Kaplan aims - successfully - to entertain, amuse, shock and amaze readers while teaching. Describing the perilous lives of shrimp, fish, snails, worms and more, he shows how evolution provides the most efficient means for surviving long enough to reproduce. These involve some pretty ingenious designs.

Like the lettuce sea slug that basks in the sun on its blade of turtle grass. It consumes algae and conveys the green chloroplasts to the lacy frills on its back, then gathers energy from the sun through photosynthesis like a plant! But, to take advantage of this free energy it must expose itself to the sun and any passing predator. It survives by tasting so bad that predators spit it out unharmed.

Kaplan does not mention what does eat it though something must since the world is not overrun with lettuce sea slugs. He also doesn't say how many offspring the hermaphrodite sea slugs produce, but most of the sea creatures discussed here produce thousands upon thousands of progeny and many are barely holding their own even though it takes only two to replace the parents.

Some creatures - seahorses and shrimp to name only two - are endangered by human predation, but even without humans the sea is a tough environment with numerous hungry predators on the prowl at every stage of life.

With vivid writing, a sense of humor and truly fascinating creatures to work with, Kaplan creates a feel for the teeming sea and rouses a sense of wonder in his readers. Line drawings in each chapter illustrate the creatures and their life cycles. This is a book for anyone with even a small bit of curiosity about the hidden world around them.

-- Portsmouth Herald