Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves
*Starred Review* The ocean, journalist Nestor reminds us, is “the final unseen, untouched, and undiscovered wilderness.”  It is also a frontier extremely difficult to explore. The pressure is so intense, at 30 feet down our “lungs collapse to half their normal size.” Yet Nestor watches divers descend to 300 feet without scuba gear at a freediving competition. Alarmed (the consequences can be dire) and intrigued, Nestor sets out to learn about the allure and best purpose of freediving as “a tool to help crack the ocean’s mysteries,” thus launching an exceptionally dramatic and revelatory inquiry. As he begins training as a freediver, in spite of his fears, Nestor learns about our body’s remarkable “amphibious reflexes,” instantaneous physical transformations used for centuries by pearl divers. Now innovative and daring marine explorers use freediving to swim among sharks, dolphins, and whales. Their mind-blowing discoveries about how these denizens of the deep navigate and communicate in the watery dark are matched by findings that prove that we, too, can practice echolocation and orient ourselves via our innate magnetic sense of direction, natural abilities our ancestors used long before maps and GPS. With a “wow” on every page, and brimming with vivid portraits, lucid scientific explanations, gripping (and funny) first-person accounts, and urgent facts about the ocean’s endangerment, Nestor’s Deep is galvanizing, enlightening, and invaluable. --Donna Seaman