Susan Casey, The Underworld ***

Susan Casey writes books about the ocean that combine science and adventure, with a pronounced tilt toward the latter. The Underworld deals with deep-sea exploration, rich men with impressive resumes who build submersibles and visit trenches seven miles below the surface of the waves.

Her books remind me of articles in Outside magazine*. The protagonists are scientific explorers, yes, but more importantly they are extreme sports enthusiasts mounting dangerous expeditions. Early on, as Casey is interviewing Terry Kirby, operations director for the Hawaii Undersea Research Lab and raconteur, she notes: 

Even his offhand comments had stories trailing behind them like party streamers. He'd throw out a phrase like "After we left Eel City..." and I'd cut in with "Wait a minute, what is Eel City?"

I have this same experience with Casey, but can't cut in with my questions. For example, just a few pages earlier, she describes a Pacific sleeper shark as having "an oddly gentle vibe, a body as brindled as old granite, and blind-white eyes thanks to a parasite that eats its corneas." Wait, what? A parasite that eats shark corneas? 

She regularly describes fascinating scientific phenomena –– say, the discovery of massive white pinnacles whose "chemistry made it a front-runner in the search for life's origins" or the nocturnal migration of a quadrillion creatures to shallower waters for feeding–– but quickly moves back to expedition logistics or the subjective feelings of the submersible pilot. 

It seemed to me that an experience so existentially big and phantasmagorically cool would change a person forever. ... I wondered what prompted Vescovo to put so much on the line... "Basically, it's the adventure."

I had a similar complaint about Casey's earlier book The Wave: the books whet my appetite for scientific insight while valorizing intrepid thrill-seekers.

The Underworld was published before the Titan submersible implosion. Casey wrote an article about Titan for Vanity Fair that may well become the afterward for the paperback edition.

* Look what I found in the acknowledgments! "It's been a pleasure to write for Outside magazine over the years."