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The Radiant Sea

The Radiant Sea is a book which shows undersea life as it has rarely been seen. Marine biologist and photographer Steven Haddock will take you behind the scenes of how the book came to be.

Steven Haddock is a local marine biologist and photographer based in Santa Cruz. He and his longtime collaborator Sönke Johnsen have produced a science and photography book entitled The Radiant Sea, about how animals use and interact with light in the ocean.

At first the book seems like your typical nature photography coffee-table book, but it is unique in a few ways. In addition to animal photos, it shows never-before-seen pictures of their vivid iridescence, bioluminescent flashes, and hidden fluorescent patterns, while introductory essays and captions explain the research behind the phenomena in (we hope!) accessible terms.

Dr. Haddock took about 175 of the 200 images that appear in the book and many of them show things discovered in the course of his research expeditions. Many of the species are found right here along the California coast, all the way down into the deep-sea 13,000 feet below the surface.

In his presentation, he will show behind-the-scenes of how the photos were obtained and play videos that bring to life the dynamics of the phenomena captured in the still images. He will have hands-on demos illustrating the physics behind pigmentation, iridescence, fluorescence, and bioluminescence. 

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