Nine kilometres beneath the sea off the coast of Japan, there are fields of yellow flowers that stretch for hundreds of kilometres. They are not plants at all but animals called crinoids, related to sea urchins and starfish, which anchor themselves to the deep seabed and feed off plankton.
The cliche that we know more about the surface of the moon than about the oceans is given vivid new currency in this blend of natural history, popular science, travelogue and ecocriticism
