Richard Ellis

In The Empty Ocean, acclaimed author and artist Richard Ellis tells the story of our continued plunder of life in the sea and weighs the chances for its recovery. Through fascinating portraits of a wide array of creatures, he introduces us to the many forms of sea life that humans have fished, hunted, and collected over the centuries, from charismatic whales and dolphins to the lowly menhaden, from sea turtles to cod, tuna, and coral. Rich in history, anecdote, and surprising fact, Richard Ellis's descriptions bring to life the natural history of the various species, the threats they face, and the losses they have suffered. Killing has occurred on a truly stunning scale, with extinction all too often the result, leaving a once-teeming ocean greatly depleted. But the author also finds instances of hope and resilience, of species that have begun to make remarkable comebacks when given the opportunity. Written with passion and grace, and illustrated with Richard Ellis's own drawings, The Empty Ocean brings to a wide audience a compelling view of the damage we have caused to life in the sea and what we can do about it."--Publisher description.

Everything you need to reach the first level of Reiki practiceReiki is a unique system of healing that allows you to harness and transmit energy through your hands, restoring balance and harmony within the body and bringing relief to a wide range of physical and emotional problems. The book illustrates all the hand positions used for the first level of Reiki, but it goes much further and shows them in their relation to the seven chakras. Chakras are the main energy points of the body and provide the anatomy of energy healing. These are different for everyone, and so to practise Reiki really effectively you need to understand a person's chakras, which will in turn explain the type of person they are and the health problems they are vulnerable to. For example one person may have an excessive first chakra, making them prone to obesity or digestive problems, and to pessimism, while another may be deficient, making them vulnerable to anorexia and restlessness. You would therefore approach these two people differently. Richard has captured the feeling of wonder that surrounds Reiki, but it's also immensely practical. So many of the current books available are very dry, following a formula of detailing the history then showing you how to do it. This one breaks the mold and is written from a very personal point of view, which makes it incredibly interesting to read and also very accessible, essential if you are to understand the true nature and potential of Reiki.

"Ellis's detailed drawings bring animals to life that have not been seen for 400 million years, some that rival science fiction monsters for sheer weirdness. Early crocodiles and turtles were three times larger than they are today: and there was once a manatee that was 30 feet long and had no bones below the elbow. There were the trilobites, jointed animals with complex eyes that dominated the seas for 200 million years and then completely disappeared: sharks with teeth on their backs: and others, 50 feet long, with teeth the size of your hand.". "Fifty million years ago, some land-dwelling mammals reentered the water and began the process of modification that turned them into whales. It was the most astonishing transformation in mammalian history. In Aquagenesis, you will track these changes and meet the paleontologists who have found the links between the terrestrial mammals and the first semiaquatic whales - creatures that probably looked like hyenas, huge shrews, or fat otters. Today the only animal on earth that regularly walk in an upright, two-legged stance are penguins and people. It is possible that our size, shape, stride, intelligence, and hair (or lack thereof) can also be explained by the provocative theory of the aquatic ape."--BOOK JACKET.

Ever since Plato created the legend of the lost island of Atlantis, it has maintained a uniquely strong grip on the human imagination. For two and a half millennia, the story of the city and its catastrophic downfall has inspired people - from Francis Bacon to Jules Verne to Jacques Cousteau - to speculate on the island's origins, nature, and location, and sometimes even to search for its physical remains. It has endured as a part of the mythology of many different cultures, yet there is no indisputable evidence, let alone proof, that Atlantis ever existed. What, then, accounts for its seemingly inexhaustible appeal? Richard Ellis plunges into this rich topic, investigating the roots of the legend and following its various manifestations into the present. He begins with the story's origins. Did it arise from a common prehistorical myth? Was it a historical remnant of a lost city of pre-Columbians or ancient Egyptians? Was Atlantis an extraterrestrial colony? Ellis sifts through the "scientific" evidence marshaled to "prove" these theories, and describes the mystical and spiritual significance that has accrued to them over the centuries. He goes on to explore the possibility that the fable of Atlantis was inspired by a conflation of the high culture of Minoan Crete with the destruction wrought on the Aegean world by the cataclysmic eruption, around 1500 B.C., of the volcanic island of Thera (or Santorini).

Prior to John Ross's successful retrieval in 1818 of six pounds of worm-filled mud from the bottom of Baffin Bay, it was widely believed that no life could possibly flourish in the dark, cold, pressurized waters of the deep Atlantic Ocean. Subsequent expeditions - conducted on ships with trawls, in submersibles such as William Beebe's bathysphere and Jacques Cousteau's Deepstar, and by remote-controlled and robotic diving devices - have unveiled a mind-boggling menagerie, a riot of deep-sea fauna with which we are still only marginally acquainted. Even today, only a handful of people have seen the pillow lava, smoking chimneys, and shimmering water of the hydrothermal vent fields, which are colonized by blind white crabs, clams as big as footballs, and gigantic tube worms with vivid red gills. Only a lucky few explorers of the abyss have encountered Vampyroteuthis infernalis, the "vampire squid from hell," with its complex clusters of photophores that it can turn on and off at will. A mere smattering of marine biologists have witnessed the herds of pulsating sea cucumbers that feed contentedly in the sand and mud of the Atlantic floor. And the same is true for the amazing pelican eel, whose body consists almost entirely of toothless mouth, and for the four-inch-long male anglerfish that permanently attaches himself to the nearly four-foot-long female. . In the strikingly illustrated Deep Atlantic, Richard Ellis brings us face-to-face with these unexpected efflorescences of evolution - fish, mammals, and members of other phyla that have been able to assume incredible shapes and great size thanks to the gravity-canceling buoyancy of water. The animals discussed and pictured herein are adapted for life in the predominant environment on our planet, since 70 percent of its surface is underwater and 90 percent of that water is more than a mile deep. Yet it is an environment as foreign to us as another universe. As we have come to expect from his previous books, Richard Ellis is here again our engrossing guide to the last frontier on earth.

The biology and economics of sperm whales, with frequent reference to Melville's Moby Dick.