Coffee Table Book of: The Midnight Zone (Hardcover)

Coffee Table Book of: The Midnight Zone is a large format book of life in the deep sea, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: anglerfish, viperfish, dragonfish and gulper eels in black water, glowing jellyfish, comb jellies and giant siphonophores, the vampire squid and the finned octopus, sharks and chimaeras of the dark water, and the communities of the abyssal mud, whale falls and hydrothermal vents.

Through the dark water column move hunters built for rare meals and faint light: female anglerfish waiting still beneath a glowing blue green lure on a curved stalk, the viperfish and the dragonfish armed with long glass clear fangs, the fangtooth, the black swallower and the gulper eel with its vast hinged pouch jaws, the barreleye looking straight upward through a clear dome over its skull, and schools of silver lanternfish and hatchetfish lined with pale blue belly lights.

Beside the fishes drift the soft bodied animals of the open dark: crimson crown and helmet jellies, crystal medusae pulsing a ring of cold blue light, comb jellies shimmering with rainbow rows of swimming hairs, a giant siphonophore trailing its glowing chain, a clear glass squid, a scarlet deep sea prawn, a vampire squid drawing its webbed arms over its head and a pale finned octopus flapping its earlike mantle fins above the floor.

Seen close are the chin barbel of a dragonfish, the round pearl like light organs along a lanternfish's flank, the glowing lure of an anglerfish, the transparent fangs of a viperfish, the clear dome head of a barreleye, the green gold eye of a ghost shark and the shimmering comb rows of a ctenophore.

Short notes run through the book, on how deep sea animals make and see light, how they hunt and feed where meals are scarce, and how life thrives under immense pressure from the twilight zone to the vents and trenches: an anglerfish's lure is lit by glowing bacteria that the fish houses inside a pocket of skin, a gulper eel's huge jaws carry tiny teeth, so the wide mouth works more like a net than a trap, a comb jelly has no stinging cells of its own and catches prey with sticky glue cells instead, and a sunken whale skeleton on the sea floor can feed a changing community of deep sea life for decades.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a hardcover with the art printed on the case.

Publisher - Cedar Pine Editions

Language - English

Case Bound - PPC

Contributors

By author

Dimitri Smith

Published Date - 2026-11-03

ISBN - 9671456009049

Dimensions - 27.9 x 21.6 x 1.2 cm

Page Count - 92